Follow the Blood
by Wutruffbeest
Summary: A series of loosely related one-shots taking place at Mount Massive. I am open to prompts, and will of course credit you if I use one of your suggestions. Characters included so far: Stephenson, David Annapurna, Waylon Park, Eddie Gluskin, Chris Walker, Rick Trager, The Twins, Miles Upshur, Father Martin, Andrew, Jeremy Blaire and The Walrider.
1. Stephenson

It had all gone to shit a lot more quickly than Stephenson wanted to admit. He'd been suspicious of his orders from the get-go. Stephenson had seen some serious shit since he'd started working for the Murkoff corporation ten years ago. He was only forty but he looked like he was creeping up on fifty. Stephenson didn't complain. To those who could stomach it, the pay was _incredible_. So long as you didn't dwell on how much of it was hazard pay, it was an easy job most of the time. Escort mysterious vehicles. Guard mysterious locations. Work security at a run-down asylum filled with unarmed crazy people.

He'd passed up an offer to be head of security when the asylum had opened. It had been tempting, but he liked being in motion. Being stuck in a building full of crazy people didn't seem like the sort of position he could be happy doing for the rest of his career. God, had it been tempting. The pay, the benefits, free lodgings. It'd be shitty to be so far from civilization, but he could get plenty of civilization when he retired on a respectable mountain of cash.

Stephenson knew now that he would've been dead a lot sooner if he'd gone for it. He was still probably going to die, but they had a chance. He'd had a bad feeling about the mission the second they'd had to make their way past an abandoned security booth. The power had been on, everything had ostensibly been working, but the place was just fucking _coated_ in blood. Harris – who was currently clutching a picture of her fiancée and muttering to herself – had called up the security footage from hours ago. Someone had cracked a nervous joke about needing to call the Ghostbusters. Stephenson hadn't laughed.

He should've bailed out the second he saw some kind of SyFy Original Movie bullshit going on, but he hadn't wanted to lose his job. His employers didn't take people disobeying orders well, and he'd been ordered to 'contain the situation by any means necessary'. They'd even specified he not blow it up, and had denied all his attempts to requisition C4. Whatever science project that had been let loose, they wanted intact.

Admin was clear, and Stephenson had relaxed. Like a fucking idiot, he'd relaxed. Maybe the Murder Ghost (so coined by Mitchell, the young man gripping his pistol so hard it would be a miracle if he could even fire it) was stuck down in the subbasement. Stephenson wasn't an expert on what a Murder Ghost could and couldn't do, but there was a lot of earth and rock between them and the basement. Maybe it was still... eating brains or drinking blood down there.

Harris had joked, as they entered the Prison Block, that she was bailing out if she saw any little girls with long hair crawling around on the ceiling. It was the last joke any of them had heard, and it had been a shitty one.

Stephenson was honestly still kinda pissed about that.

The Prison Block had turned into a bloodbath so fast he still wasn't entirely sure what had happened. They'd gone in with the goal of clearing it out, block by block, and they hadn't gotten past the first before it went to shit. First a mob of inmates came out of nowhere, and while they seemed like they'd be a joke with their crude weapons, they wounded three guys, forcing them to start a retreat.

Right when they were winning, the inmates scattered, and Stephenson got an eyeful of the Murder Ghost in person. Looking at it made his vision wobble, made him feel like someone was scraping an iron file all over his bones, and he started shouting orders. Stephenson didn't even know if they were coherent. He didn't know how many rounds they tried to put into the thing before Mitchell, like the complete _tit_ he was, threw his entire rifle at it instead of reloading. Like the footage they'd seen, the Murder Ghost started to tear them apart like they were made of wet paper.

He'd gone into Mount Massive with two dozen men, and in the ensuing carnage, he'd only been able to extract two. It hadn't really caught up with them until they'd wrapped back around to the admin block. Mitchell had put down a few inmates who'd tried to skitter away. Harris had hissed at him to conserve bullets. They'd almost headed _up_ when someone on an intercom suggested they come upstairs for some first aid, but Stephenson had declined. There was no way anyone here was sane. No fucking way. So of course, the crazy fucker had started shouting shit all over the PA. Where he was that he had access to it, Stephenson didn't know, but they were beset by the roving pack of lunatics from the Prison Block. It was like they didn't feel pain. They just soaked up bullets and kept coming, screaming their heads off. Now all they had left between them was maybe six rounds, total. Pistol only. Getting back to admin had been a fucking nightmare. The front door was just around the corner. All they had to do was run for it.

But it had seen them. That huge fucking _thing_ had seen them, and now it was _hunting_ them. The three of them were wedged in a utility closet. It smelled strongly of Lysol and it burned his nostrils, but he didn't care. They had a plan, and that plan was: once the monster walked past the closet, they were running for it. They would haul their asses out and they would get in one of the MRAPs and never look back. Stephenson was going to retire immediately. Harris could marry her girlfriend and go on that shitty Yosemite camping honeymoon she wouldn't shut up about. Mitchell could... he didn't know. Jerk off to porn more, because he was a dork. Stephenson didn't really know the kid.

He'd be alive. That's what counted.

They held their breath as a unit when the heavy footsteps approached. Then they stopped, right by the closet.

It made an awful _sniffing_ noise, like a dog, and ground out, "We have to contain it."

Stephenson had heard it say some other fucked up things. He'd thought it was one of his men for a second, the way it had been talking, but if this guy was on _his_ side, that Murder Ghost would've been _fucked_. Just when he was sure it would open the door, it moved on, muttering to itself, having what sounded like a one-sided radio conversation with no one at all. When he couldn't hear it anymore, he nudged Harris. She kissed the picture of her fiancée and tucked it away. Harris was first. She had the shortest legs, and Stephenson wanted her in front in case he needed to pick her up by her collar and drag her. He was getting these kids out, no matter what.

Mitchell threw the door open and Stephenson frowned when it bounced off of something. Before he could stop Harris, though, she was out. She was quick, but less quick with riot gear on, and she made it two steps out of the closet before a monstrous hand swiped at her. Stephenson felt like he grabbed for her in slow motion, he and Mitchell tumbling out of the closet as well, but too late. The monster was able to grab her entire head, helmet and all, in it's fist. Once it had a hold of her it smashed her into – smashed her _through_ – the opposite wall.

"Harris!" Mitchell shrieked.

"Run! She's down, run!" Stephenson started to run, but Mitchell was making weird noises and pointing his pistol at the thing.

"Filth," it grunted. It grabbed Mitchell's hands, pistol and all, and didn't even flinch when he managed to discharge a bullet through its flesh. Slowly, it closed its fist, and the sound of Mitchell's hands being crushed was one that would haunt Stephenson forever. And that wasn't looking that long. Mitchell was screaming, and he didn't stop until the thing let go of his hands, grabbed his neck, and ripped his head off like it had only been attached with Velcro. Subverting Stephenson's wildest expectations, the monster kept the head, and threw the body at Stephenson.

He could hate himself later for leaving Harris. She was probably dead. If not dead, then dying. Stephenson had to get out. He had to get back into radio range. They had to know how fucked it was here. They had to know to bring more than three fucking trucks!

Mitchell's body missed him because he was no longer where he'd been standing, and the monster was in hot pursuit. It'd seemed slow before, but it was closing on Stephenson now. He passed security. He slipped and scrambled around the corner, but somehow stayed upright. Stephenson could hear it breathing now, labored and harsh, like he had a chest cold. Boy, it had to be hell to blow your nose when you didn't have one.

The desk. Stephenson vaulted over the back desk, and then the front, and he slammed into the door. Someone had lined it with corpses, heavy, hard to move corpses, and the stupid door opened _inwards_. Headless, heavy corpses that would take him too long to move with the thing right up his ass. It had laid a trap, it had laid a fucking _trap_ for him oh _motherfucker_-

"Can't breach the perimeter," it rumbled, practically in his ear. Stephenson whirled on it, not firing his pistol, but beating it's big, lumpy head with it. He managed to sock it a few good ones before it made a grab, but Stephenson rolled away, throwing the useless pistol away from him and drawing a knife from his boot. He didn't know if he was pissed or terrified when it laughed at him. It even waited for him, crouched slightly.

Stephenson charged with a yell that was more high pitched than he would've liked and tried to gut the fat fuck. It was too fast, and even if it _did_get a hit, the knife barely scratched him. Almost none of the cuts bled. It stopped fighting suddenly, and Stephenson didn't question it – maybe the Murder Ghost was back, that would just be the icing on the cake – and sank his knife deep into the thing's belly. It grunted, but when Stephenson tried to saw across, to disembowel the thing, it grabbed his throat with one hand, and both his wrists with the other. So calm. So measured. It pulled the knife out with another, quieter grunt. A thin trickle of blood seeped out, but the bleeding stopped more quickly than was normal.

Well, maybe it was normal for murderous tubs of guts with dead men's eyes. Stephenson couldn't swear to be the expert on that subject.

"Come on you piece of shit, come on!" Stephenson hollered at him, "I came here to contain _you_, you dogfucker!"

It didn't kill him. Instead, it just listened, holding him very still. The pressure of its grip was uncomfortable, but it wasn't crushing bone like it had done with Mitchell.

"You got them all killed," it said. Stephenson didn't like how aware this thing was. It looked like some roving pile of malevolent, rotten bacon. That it could think and plan and make him feel _guilty_ was just... _unfair_, "They're all dead because you're a piece of shit C.O. You led them in there and they believed in you and now they're _dead_."

This fucking thing was just as nuts as everyone else.

"They're dead because of _you_," Stephenson said, "You and that fucking... _shitty ghost_!"

"I'll contain it," it said, "Only I can contain it."

In one smooth motion it bounced Stephenson's head against the counter of the front desk, and things got a little murky. The helmet had absorbed some of the blow, but they were moving. Away from the door, away from the headless corpses of the people who had trusted him to get them through this. God, he'd _failed_. Stephenson had failed before, there wasn't a human being on the planet who hadn't, but never on this level. Never this _badly_.

He'd been invited to Harris's wedding. He had joked about if he was sitting on the groom's side or the brides and she'd affectionately called him an asshole. Stephenson knew it had been a shitty thing to say before he'd said it, but he'd thought it would be funny. It would make everyone else laugh. It had. She'd been cool about it, but he had seen in her eyes how he had managed to cut her down in front of the others. He'd been intending to apologize at the reception. He had a whole speech.

She was halfway through a wall now. Dead. Would some sick freak loot her corpse and find the picture of her fiancée and jerk off to it? Jesus, what would they do to _her_corpse _here_?

Dark. It was dark. Stephenson didn't know why. The power was on, but not in this room. Was he dead? Maybe he was dead. If he saw Harris, he'd apologise. Hell, he'd apologise to Mitchell for not ever bothering to know anything about him. Light blazed on and Stephenson winced. Not dead, then, just disoriented. An overwhelming _stench_ washed over him, and when things came back into focus, Stephenson sincerely wished it would just kill him. It was some fucked up... _effigy_. Some monument to being a sentient, homicidal ham. Stephenson didn't know why, but he started to laugh. This was fucking _ridiculous_. This entire place was a waking nightmare, and they'd sent in _three_ MRAPs, _one_ squad_. Nothing else_. Did they even _know_ how badly they'd fucked up? They hadn't even made it past one block!

There was a long, jagged metal strut coming up out of a pile of bodies. The heads were all turned to look at it, and Stephenson recognized some of them. Too many of them.

"It's going to hurt," it said. Stephenson didn't know what was going to happen until it did, and that he didn't black out immediately was just one more unfathomable cruelty on the pile. Someone was screaming – probably him, since he'd just been impaled on a length of metal taller than the thing that had skewered him on it – and the monster turned off the light, "_Hush_."

In the dark, in agony, Stephenson could feel the accusing stares of his fallen men. He'd hold on for as long as he could. After what he'd led them into? He deserved to suffer.


	2. Valentine's Day

Eddie wasn't nervous. The first few times he'd been _extremely_ nervous, crippled with anxiety. He'd only made it through because apparently his nerves were charming. _Adorable_, the first girl had said. She had been sweet, and almost as tall as he was, and he really hadn't been planning on doing what he did. When he'd pulled up in front of her house to drop her off, she'd looked at him in a way that made his heart race. She'd kissed him and whispered something... something _crude_, something _foul_ in his ear, and suddenly it was very late at night and he was six and crying for his mother. He hurt, and he hurt _so badly_, and daddy was in the shower, and he was singing. She was crying too, but she told him to go to sleep. That he would feel better in the morning.

She'd make pancakes and everything would be all right, and daddy wouldn't do it again.

But he always did. And she never stopped him.

When he'd come back to himself she had been clawing at his wrists, because he was strangling her, _hurting_ her, making her pay for everything that had ever been done to him. He had felt as though he was watching it happen, powerless to stop it. And then, when she was dead, he had been _glad_ he hadn't stopped. He was _glad_ that stupid _whore_ was _dead_. Eddie felt _sick_ and _exhilarated_, and then he'd realized he had a dead body in his car.

He was a better about it, now. More careful. The police had spoken to him the first time, asking if they'd seen her, and while Eddie had been sweating bullets, he didn't think they had anything on him. Eddie had gone on, carefully, and nothing had come of it.

So he wasn't nervous. And maybe this one would be different. Her name was Daisy, and she was everything he looked for in a woman. She was full figured and feminine, and she had even blushed when he'd kissed her hand and held the door open for her. Eddie had learned quickly what to say and how to say it, and he'd learned when to let his inexperience with women take over. Too much, and they usually wouldn't leave the restaurant with him, too little, and they'd make some excuse to leave before dinner was even over. He had nearly perfected it.

All Eddie wanted was someone to love him, to have his children, to help him live the life he'd never been able to have. He didn't think it was too much to ask. Daisy seemed to exude the qualities he liked, and his plans started to melt away as the night progressed. She talked about her family life, and he lied about his, at least by omission. His family was dead and gone, but despite what his face said, he wasn't sad about it. He'd inherited everything, even if it wasn't much, a rundown house filled with horrific memories. But he was fixing that. He was fixing it, one girl at a time.

Maybe this time he'd get it right.

They talked about their hopes and dreams and they both drank too much. Eddie usually avoided getting drunk, needing to be in control of himself, but he felt at ease around Daisy. She seemed so _wholesome_. She'd even grown up on a farm. Even her _name_ suggested a soft, maternal nature. Daisy had taken care of her younger siblings growing up, and she looked forward to looking after her own some day. Eddie couldn't help but agree. By the time they realized how late it was, neither of them were in any position to drive, so they'd taken a cab back to his place to wrap things up without employees giving them the stinkeye for lingering. He liked her. Not just because she ticked off every item on his list, but because she was so _warm_, so _gentle_. She was a lot of things he hadn't even realized he'd been missing. Things he'd never even _experienced_.

She'd called someone, letting them know she was taking a cab and that she'd be home late, and Eddie didn't think anything of it.

Daisy looked briefly concerned by his house, but she swept it aside, probably remembering what he'd told her about it. He was all alone, he'd told her, and the house was all he had left of his family. It wasn't much to look at on the outside, but inside it was very well kept, and that seemed to ease her mind. Eddie invited her into the kitchen and started to make them both coffees, and he loved this new feeling. He loved that something warm and domestic and _honest_ was happening in the kitchen. He wanted to overwrite every bad memory in the house. Daisy could help him redecorate in more ways than one – it did need a woman's touch, after all.

"Where's your bathroom?" Daisy asked.

"Upstairs, first door on the right," Eddie told her, "How do you take your coffee?"

"Two sugars, no milk," Daisy rose, scooped up her clutch to take with her, and winked at him, "Extra sweet."

Eddie watched her go before he resumed filling the filter with grounds and leaned on the counter while the coffee brewed. He couldn't help it and he hugged himself, squeezing his eyes shut. She was different. Daisy wasn't like the others. He'd just put it all behind him. How he was going to get rid of the bodies was going to be a problem, but he'd figure it out. They'd have beautiful children, and they would love them and never hurt them, and he would forget all about what happened. It would stop hurting. Everything would be perfect.

The coffee machine beeping stirred him from his reverie, and Eddie frowned, looking upwards. He didn't hear much movement. What was she doing up there? Fixing her make-up, maybe? He was immediately suspicious, but then kicked himself. Daisy wasn't like that. She was perfect. If she was snooping, he'd hear more footsteps. Maybe some shouting.

And she was coming downstairs. Eddie exhaled the breath he was holding and started to mix two spoons of sugar into her coffee, crossing over to the fridge to get the milk. He didn't even like coffee, but he drank it because it was what couples drank together at the kitchen table. Daisy returned to the kitchen, but Eddie's smile for her faded into a concerned frown when he saw her face. She looked pale, and maybe even a little_green_. Like she was going to be sick.

"Daisy? What's the matter?"

"N-nothing," she said. He put his hands on her shoulders to guide her to her seat, and she shivered. Not at his touch, of course. Because she was sick, "I just... I think that steak disagreed with me. I'm sorry to... I called a friend to pick me up. I should go home before I ralph all over your house."

Eddie sat down next to her, dragging his chair closer, and he tried not to get angry. Maybe if she'd had the chicken dish he'd silently thought she ought to eat, she wouldn't be so sick. She was ruining the night with her selfish decisions. It was a struggle not to tell her so, but Daisy was different. She wasn't going to end up in the basement with the others. He could fix her without killing her.

"That's all right," he said after a pause that might've been too long. She didn't seem to notice, so he didn't worry about it, "I'm sorry you're not feeling well. Do you want a glass of water?"

"Oh, no thank you," she said. She kept flicking looks at him. Was she ashamed of being sick? Maybe she was ashamed of her behaviour. It was a good opportunity to show that he was accepting of her, even if she did have some flaws.

"It's not your fault," he said kindly, trying a bit of friendly teasing to cheer her up, "I _did_ suggest that chicken dish, though, didn't I?"

She smiled, and it was wan thing, but that was to be expected.

"I guess I should have listened," Daisy said. Eddie _beamed_ at her. He had _high hopes_ for her, "I... I really enjoyed our date, Eddie. I've had such bad luck with online dating. Nobody ever gives me a chance. I just didn't want to be alone on Valentine's Day."

"You don't have to be ever again," Eddie said. He was pleased when she started to cry. Of course he didn't _want_ her to, but she could obviously feel what he was feeling. She wanted what he wanted, "We'll be beautiful together, Daisy. You'll see."

The knock at the door made Daisy jump to her feet and Eddie frowned. She was suddenly spry for someone who was sick. Spry and running – running for the door. _Sprinting_. She couldn't have seen anything. She couldn't have. He hung the bodies downstairs-

-after he finished _fixing_ them in the only place he could discreetly let blood drip down the drain: the shower stall in his bathroom. Had he cleaned up after the last one? It was hard to keep track, lately, of what was real and what he _wanted_ to be real. Time had been difficult for him to grasp these past few months.

The door opened, and suddenly his kitchen was swarming with police. Eddie rose to his feet and threw scalding hot coffee in the face of the first man who came at him, smashed the mug into the head of another, and tried to barrel through the rest, trying to run Daisy down. Eddie could only see red. He could only see blood. _Her_ blood. _Whore's_ blood, swirling down the drain.

"You shallow bitch! You're like all the others!" he shrieked. How _could_ she!? She had _tricked_ him! He'd been nothing but a perfect gentleman and she hadn't even _tried_ to understand him, "Cunt! _Whore_!"

His screaming was cut short when someone jammed a tazer into his side. Someone else maced him for good measure. Vaguely, Eddie was aware of being kicked in the ribs, and more people poured into his house, down into the basement, up into the closed bedrooms and the gory bathroom. Everything he was laid bare and naked, _violated_.

Eddie wept.


	3. Nursery

Waylon was starting to get tired of his capacity to be horrified, shocked, or otherwise appalled. There was a man hunting him, but that was blasé, now. The man hunting him had decorated the Vocational Block with grisly tableaus, all depicting some twisted vision of a perfect life. Of everything he'd seen, Eddie Gluskin's Happy Home of Horrors was the worst of it. Maybe because too much of what he saw evoked things he could identify with. Holding his wife's hand while she delivered their children. Seeing her in her wedding dress. Knowing the moment he saw her that he was going to fall in love with her.

Eddie had taken those things, precious to him, valuable pieces of his life, and he had twisted them into mockeries of love and devotion. He'd seen the file. Waylon wasn't a psychologist, but he imagined the man was stuck in some terrible loop, and that the only way to make sense of it was to transform his surroundings. _He _was in control, here. _He_ decided what happened. He was taking back what was taken from him, one bride at a time.

Thank God he kept singing and humming and chattering to himself. He wasn't good at being quiet. It was easy, so far, to evade him. Waylon felt like he was in a maze, and he was the cheese for a very, very hungry mouse. He kept getting lost, kept getting turned around, but he had to get out.

Would he be able to look at Lisa the same way again? No, he couldn't think about that now. He could get past this. If he survived, he could get past all of it.

Waylon slipped into a dark room when Eddie's voice became louder, beseeching Waylon (his _darling_) to just come out, that everything would be all right. Eddie might just walk past, but he might check in this room too, since the door had been unlocked. He needed to hide. Waylon flicked the nightvision on and what he saw stole his breath.

Cribs. Cradles. Bassinets. All crudely assembled. There had to be a dozen of them, all crowded into the room. Waylon didn't move. Was Eddie going to steal his fond memories of looking down at his children while they slept, too? There was even a rocking chair in the corner. He had to hide. Eddie's voice was much closer, and he was talking about children now, either because it was one of his talking points, or because he was near his facsimile nursery. Waylon quickly wedged himself behind some pallets that were leaned against the far wall, lumber for future projects, and tried not to picture what he'd just seen. Hand-sewn baby blankets in cribs. Mobiles with medical equipment that had been cut into 'happy' shapes.

Maybe Eddie wanted to mutilate his penis, but there in the dark, with Eddie crooning 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star', he realized Eddie was taking something much more precious without even touching him.

_**Nursery - Prompt credit goes to garbageboi & milesupshur on tumblr.**_


	4. Faceplant

"When I was a boy my mother often said to me… get married boy and see how happy you will be!"

Eddie despised being dirty, and trying to make a family was dirty, dirty work. It wouldn't do for him to find his one and only caked in the unpleasant fluids that seemed to ooze out of every orifice of the _whores_ that infested this place. Some places in the asylum were spotty, but overall the electricity was still humming. Likely powered by the dark, awful place under his feet. Eddie frowned and pushed it out of his mind. He sang louder and scrubbed at his uneven skin more vigorously.

"I have looked all over, but no girlie can I find, who seems to be just like the little girl I have in mind!"

He heard the door open and Eddie went still, listening. Bare feet slapped unevenly on the tiles. Someone lame, someone hurt. He pretended he hadn't heard, and sang another verse.

"I will have to look around until the right one I have," Eddie whirled on his guest, "_Found_."

His guest was walleyed and his limbs were twisted, and he had all of Eddie's clothing gathered up in his misshapen arms. One of the sadder creatures in the asylum. Not fit to bear children. Beggars couldn't be choosers, but it was clear this_thing_ was barely even human. They stood there, both tense, and then the walleyed invader ran out of the bathroom with his clothes, giggling like a lunatic. A sock flew out of the stolen mass, making a wet slopping noise when it hit the ground.

"Get back here!" Eddie roared. He surged forward, thinking only of the suit he'd painstakingly assembled. How would he make it again, when it had been so difficult just to make it the first time!? He made it five steps before he slipped on his own sock and landed face first on the tile floor.

_**Prompt credit goes to imagineyouricon on tumblr.**_


	5. Red

David had dealt with institutionalized people all his life, and knew something at Mount Massive wasn't right. It had started out decently enough. The pay increase from his last job had been incredible. Too big to pass up, no matter how much he'd loved his old job and co-workers, and even the lifer patients, stable but unable to ever truly be released 'back into the wild' as it were. He'd thought it would help his career. His credentials spoke for themselves, and _they'd_ come after _him_. Turning it down seemed, well. Insane. His parents had always been disappointed that he was 'just' an orderly, but the increase in his salary had somewhat put a stop to that nonsense.

He was just as important as a doctor or a nurse, and most doctors and nurses respected that. When both your parents had their own practices...

David had been eager to prove his worth, but it only been a year, and he was getting concerned. Patients weren't getting better. They weren't even _plateauing_. They were getting worse, and not just mentally. He was watching one of the most drastic examples of 'worse' trying to work out in the yard, and it was making him wince, the way the man wheezed and coughed, struggling for every breath and still pushing through. Chris's aggression was becoming a real problem, and David didn't think exercise was doing him any good. He was reluctant to stop him, however. Chris had been sensitive about his weight (a fact he vehemently denied, but David knew better) on admission, and he'd only gotten bigger. Being forced into a small room, in isolation, with very limited active time, hadn't done him much good.

While it gnawed at David that Chris seemed to have grown taller, and that his muscle mass hadn't actually reduced, and that his limp was almost non-existent, was that nobody seemed to be doing _anything_ for Chris's mental state. David heard him muttering to himself, reliving awful memories from Afghanistan. He didn't even know the full story – David was concerned nobody was even _trying_. David couldn't just sit there and let him suffer, and it wasn't _just_ because he wanted to help – Chris was _enormous_, and if he snapped, he could seriously hurt people. Maybe kill them.

Once Chris had finished his workout, and after he'd spent a good ten minutes hawking up the phlegm it had worked loose, David approached him. Slow, with his hands visible, a smile on his face. Most people grimaced around Chris, or eyeballed him nervously. He was intimidating, and David, who had never been classed as _tall_ to begin with, was dwarfed by him. Chris noticed him right away and stopped in his tracks.

"Hey, Chris," David said, "Do you mind if I talk to you before your shower? I want to ask you something, and you can think about it on your own."

Chris grunted and scratched at his nose. He coughed into his hand after, and wiped his palm on his thigh.

"I thought we could both go to art therapy and give it a try," David said. He saw Chris's eyes narrow and David held his hands out. Not _up_, but wider, palms still visible and facing out, "Just a try. If it doesn't do anything for you, we never have to do it again. Not unless you want to."

"I'll think about it," Chris said. His voice was thick and gravelly, and once David moved out of his way, he continued on to the showers. David exhaled quietly when he was alone again, and he waited for Chris to rejoin him. He agreed, grudgingly, to give it a try. David thought that was a very good sign. If he was willing to _try_, then he at least knew something was wrong, and that getting better was in his best interest.

There were others in the art therapy room. A lot of patients really responded to it. Martin was there, as always, smiling serenely as he painted with his fingers. His desk was half-covered with his work for the day, and he was even working independently today, with no direction from his doctor or a nurse. David led Chris to a far corner of the room and had him sit down, and once he was seated, he brought him some paper and a box of crayons. Maybe he'd get in trouble for this, but he didn't care. He was tired of seeing patients circle the drain, like they were being forgotten about. Forgotten or intentionally traumatized, but that seemed too paranoid. Murkoff was a legitimate corporation. They wouldn't be purposefully harming people. Where was the profit in that?

"What the fuck is _this_?" Chris asked. He looked _very_ unimpressed with the cheerful box of crayons.

"I'd like you to try another way of working through your aggression, Chris," David said, "You didn't like when they put you in restraints the other week, did you?"

Chris scowled but said nothing. He'd gotten annoyed at someone in the cafeteria for taking too long and bashed them over the head with his lunch tray. He hadn't responded well to being taken in for that, and sedation had been rather alarmingly ineffective until they hit a very high dose.

"And I know you're having trouble breathing."

Chris mumbled something, and David heard the word 'tubes', but most of it was incoherent.

"What was that?"

"So what am I supposed to do?" Chris spoke up and shifted in his seat. It creaked unhappily under his weight.

"I want you to draw how you feel."

"Fuck you," Chris was grinning, but David still wasn't sure if it was an _affectionate_ 'fuck you' or a threatening one, "I can't even draw stick men."

"It doesn't have to be literal," David said, patient, "Patches of color, or maybe shapes. Just something that represents how you feel, or how you've felt. Whatever you want."

Chris sighed (a thick, unpleasant noise that rattled in his barrel chest) and picked at the crayons. He wasted some time stretching and settling into his chair, but after he'd peered around the room, he gave it a try and picked out a black crayon. David said nothing and just waited patiently, and Chris tapped the waxy tip on the paper a few times before he started to draw some jagged, wandering lines. He made a few before he snorted and crumpled it up.

"Chris, there isn't a wrong way—"

"It's the wrong color," Chris snapped at him. David nodded and apologized quietly, and Chris selected the brightest red next, leaving the black on the table. He started in the corner and began to fill it in. Slow, at first, but then faster and faster, with great purpose. Sweat beaded on his brow, and David wondered if he was going to get fired for this. He wasn't a doctor. What if he was making things worse, triggering some awful memory they'd actually helped him bury? He looked around, nervous, but nobody seemed to give a shit. Not even Martin was looking over, his tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth like he was carefully detailing a masterpiece.

Chris colored so hard that it made the black crayon on the desk rock back and forth. He colored so hard he snapped the crayon in two, and then wore both down to nubs. Once those were gone, Chris mechanically selected another red crayon, a dark crimson and started to cover the bright red.

"Chris...?"

"Red," Chris said, his voice hollow, "Red on red on red on red on blood on _blood_."

His hand jerked and he drew a sharp, jagged line down, so fast that he drew on the table, too. He dropped the crayon and started to shake, grabbing his head an making labored noises.

"So much blood and none of it is mine," Chris gasped, "None of it is mine, none of it, blood on blood _on blood on dead on dead_. They all died! They died because I _told them to_!"

"Chris, you're here with me. With David," David said gently. It was a gamble, but he laid a hand on Chris's shoulder, not wanting him to be anchorless. A violent shudder wracked Chris's body, but he didn't lash out. An awful sob choked out of him and David's heart broke, "You're in Colorado. Mount Massive. Where are you, Chris?"

"Colorado," he said thickly, parroting David right down to his tone, "Mount Massive."

"Chris are... are you not talking about your PTSD with your doctor?"

David knew he was way over the line, but he couldn't just sit idly by. This man was suffering tremendously, and nobody was helping! In fact, he was beginning to strongly suspect he was being purposefully _neglected_. PTSD wasn't exactly a mysterious ailment. It was awful what he'd done in the throes of a flashback, and he had absolutely needed to be committed, but he was still a _human being_. And he could be a _whole_ one again.

Chris was suddenly mute, and he wiped at his face, shaking his head.

"Chris, you won't get in trouble," David said, unsure if he could really promise that, "You can tell me. I can get help. But I need to know what's going on."

"You should get out," Chris said after a long, strange silence. He looked David in the eye, and in the light of the art room, David could swear his eyes looked like they were _fading_. Hadn't they been brown when he was admitted? They looked hazel now. Almost blue, "Before _it_ does."

"What, Chris?"

Chris shook his head again, and he slid the paper over to David.

"You helped," he said, "They won't like that."


	6. Princess

Chris avoided the Vocational Block. He'd gone there before, after things had gone wrong, and he'd been... _thrown off_ by the encounter. Gluskin was much faster than the others, for one thing, and while Chris was fast, too? Gluskin didn't have as much extra weight to haul around. That, and he knew the Vocational Block much better than Chris did. He'd only been there a handful of times before he'd been deemed unsafe to be in common areas, and then it had been shut down anyway. Gluskin, he suspected, had spent much more time there than he had, and he made excellent use of his knowledge. And if that wasn't bad enough? He kept... _insinuating_ things about Chris that Chris didn't care for.

He'd heard pretty much every fat joke imaginable, in his lifetime. Ever since he'd been a kid, he'd been big, and not just _taller_ than everyone –_bigger_. His coaches had yelled, people at Basic had yelled... the only time he _hadn't_ been chunky had been after basic, during deployment, and the second he'd come home he'd gained it all back. Chris was just a big guy, and he liked eating too much to give a shit about it. But Gluskin had struck a nerve when he'd started to cry when he saw Chris. _That_ reaction he was used to, but Gluskin wasn't _afraid_. Gluskin was just so happy that Chris would be delivering their _twins_ soon.

Chris had known, then and there, that he was going to rip that smarmy assholes head off. And as a fucking bonus, even while he was being chased, Gluskin chided him (though he kept calling Chris a _she_) for overexerting himself in his delicate condition and that if he would just sit down and relax, Gluskin would rub his feet and run him a hot bath. Chris couldn't believe the fucking _balls_ on Gluskin, to actively taunt him while running for his life. It had distracted him for an embarrassing amount of time. Chris could only sustain short, furious bursts before he couldn't bring in enough oxygen to keep him going, and then he'd have to lumber around, gasping and gurgling, waiting for his lungs to clear. It wasn't as bad as it had been, but he was still almost constantly congested. Gluskin didn't have that problem.

He had a job to do, and if the slaughter he'd seen around the Vocational Block was Gluskin's work? Fine. He was helping him, even if he didn't have the same higher purpose that Chris did. Chris left him to it. He had a job to do, and he couldn't be distracted from it.

Containment was a slow process, but it was steady. He had much to show for his hard work, rows and rows of heads, corpses neatly arranged. Everyone would be safe. They would thank him for this, even though they were afraid of him now. They hadn't sent anymore security. They trusted him to do the work. His service record spoke for itself, after all. He did whatever it took to finish his missions.

Though he should've just left him for last, Gluskin had been the only shit to insult him and get away with it, and he kept thinking about him between dealing with the others. Chris didn't like being made a fool of, and maybe he could catch Gluskin out this time. He was a nutjob like all the others, after all. Maybe he'd broken down more since Chris had seen him last.

He hadn't. There were a lot more bodies, but Chris could hear him humming and singing to himself serenely before he saw him. Well, he'd been very busy, at least. Chris would give him some credit, even if he was very, very sloppy about it. Chris waited at the end of a hall, and when Eddie rounded a corner at the other end, he stopped, gripping his knife tightly and narrowing his eyes. It didn't last long. Gluskin recognized him and he smiled, throwing his arms wide like he very much intended to give Chris a great big hug when he got to him. Chris wanted to charge but he held back. Running after Gluskin was pointless. If he was nuts enough to approach him, let him.

"Darling!"

Gluskin didn't slow down, even when Chris clenched and unclenched his hands in anticipation. Chris had been confronted with a great many reactions to his person, ranging from men shitting their pants, to running away screaming, to trying their damndest to kill him. He had yet to be threatened with a _hug_, and without even thinking about it, instead of grabbing Gluskin, he took a step backwards and started to raise his hands. What the fuck was wrong with him? The knife Chris wasn't worried about. Whatever had been done to him knit him back together quick. If Gluskin meant to knife him in the back, he'd lose both his fucking arms, and he'd wish him luck growing _those_ back.

"Stop," Chris said. Gluskin chuckled indulgently and didn't listen, so Chris put a hand on the center of Gluskin's chest and _shoved_. Gluskin let out a startled noise and stumbled back a few steps before landing on his ass. Chris growled at him. This had been a bad idea. Gluskin was _completely_out of his mind. He hadn't been making fun of him at all, had he? He was just _crazy_.

"Still feisty," Gluskin said, getting to his feet. He didn't approach again, and Chris hunched over slightly. This close, he could probably still catch him if he charged. His legs were longer, and he could build up momentum quicker. Why hadn't he already killed him? _Goddammit_. He was just too thrown off by how fucking _weird_ Gluskin was, "I know your hormones must be raging _out of control_, my darling, but I _really_ wish you would _rest_. It can't be long now."

"Fuck you, Gluskin," Chris said.

"I've made you something special," Gluskin said. Chris saw that his words had registered, but Gluskin was choosing not to react to them, "I know you must be feeling... _uncomfortable_, but I let out your wedding dress for you. So you can feel like a princess again. _My_ princess."

Chris had no idea how to respond to that. He knew he wanted to kill him for it, but he had been momentarily stunned. Gluskin started to back down the hall, beckoning, and Chris followed, stalking him. This guy had only gotten crazier, left to his own devices, and it was time he got put down. Chris promised himself that no matter what batshit crazy garbage that came out of his mouth next, even if Gluskin tried to blow him, he'd finish the job.

Gluskin stopped by a stack of pallets that almost reached the ceiling, and Chris quickened his pace. This time, Gluskin held his ground, arms open, smiling. If he had to suffer a creepy hug from a crazy man to rip off his head, so be it. He had a job to do. Gluskin had served his purpose, and now he was just a distracting hindrance. Once he was dead, Chris could resume his work with far more efficiency. Efficiency was important. Containment was necessary.

Too late, he saw that Gluskin reached behind the pallets as he grabbed him up in a crushing bear hug, lifting him off his feet so he couldn't get away. Gluskin didn't even struggle, and he shoved a plastic mask with canister of gas attached to it over his face, twisting the nozzle on full stream. While they had been a burden to him, keeping him from doing his job, from seeing what needed to be seen, he almost regretted removing his nose and lips now, as there was nothing between him and the gas. Chris tried to hold his breath, at least, and began to crush Gluskin. He felt some of his ribs give, and Gluskin grit his teeth, blood trickling from his mouth, but he kept the mask jammed over Chris's face. He tried to turn his head, but just as he had Gluskin trapped, he was trapped with Gluskin.

"You need your _rest_, darling," Gluskin snarled, "Just _lie_. _Down_. _And_. _REST_."

Chris didn't know when he'd gone slack, but he did vaguely hear Gluskin cursing to himself before things faded to black. He had to contain it. Gluskin didn't understand how important it was...

When he came too, he came too with a violent start. His surroundings were different, and his movement was heavily restricted. Chris was almost bemused by the sheer volume of chains, rope, wire, even barbed wire that Gluskin had used as makeshift restraints. _Almost_. Chris struggled again, and felt something give. Not enough to allow him movement, though. This stupid son of a bitch what... _what was he wearing_!?

He was wearing a _dress_. _A white dress_. Mostly white, anyway. It was dirty and it had blood stains on it, concentrated around the tits and crotch. Chris then noticed that he wasn't wearing his boots anymore.

Or his pants.

_That sick fuck had taken his pants off._

"_Gluskin_!"

"Coming, darling!" Gluskin practically _sang_. He smiled warmly when he saw Chris and approached the table he'd lashed him too, "I told you I'd let it out, didn't I? It took a _lot_ of material, but I'm sure once the babies are born, all this extra weight will just come _right_ off."

He affectionately stroked Chris's gut and Chris struggled violently, snarling at him. _What the fuck!?  
_  
"I'll kill you," Chris promised, "I'll fucking kill you_. I'm going to make you bleed_."

"Now, now, darling, I know it's painful, but a woman must be more _gracious_ about these things," Gluskin said. _Chiding_ him.

Chris was coming back to himself more by the minute, and he started to struggle again, more violently. His skin was thicker since his _treatments_, and he barely felt the chafing or the barbed wire digging in. All the restraints would break and give before Chris did, and Gluskin backed away a step, a scowl cracking through his happy, stupid smile.

"Darling, _enough_!" Gluskin said. He hurried over to a corner and started to go through a pile of... something. Chris heard metal on metal – more canisters of gas. Fuck, he didn't know what would happen if Gluskin put him down again. Would he try to get his fucking _babies_ out of Chris's stomach? Chris wasn't going to find out. With a primal howl, he yanked an arm free and started to tear at the rest of his restraints with his thick, sturdy talons.

"I'm gonna carve _darling_ into your forehead you shit!" Chris warned him. Gluskin had given up on the gas (all of them were empty, he assumed) and he had backed up to the doorway. He looked torn, warring between running away and trying to calm Chris down.

"Darling, please!" Gluskin said, "You're in labor! It's natural for you to blame me for your pain, but—"

"I'm not pregnant you crazy fuck!" Chris had both arms free now, and his legs were going to swiftly follow, "You piece of shit! You _filth_!"

Chris was free and he launched after Gluskin, but it was the same story as last time. Gluskin shouted his concern at Chris, and Chris tried to catch him. The biggest difference was that he was wearing a dress, and it kept getting caught on things. Chris gave up a lot faster this time. The gas had really screwed up his lungs – he'd obviously been given a lot more than was advisable – and trying to hunt a man down in a dress was just...

"Walking helps hurry the labor along, darling!" Gluskin called from... somewhere.

Chris didn't care. He was going to find his pants and his boots and never come back here again.

_**Inspired by a picture of Chris Walker in a wedding dress from tumblr user karnessah.**_


	7. House Call

_Boy_ had Rick ever screwed up. Assuming he didn't get gutted by Ward Cleaver here, he was going to seriously reconsider his methods. Maybe set up a practice instead of being a travelling surgeon. He'd be able to use the fancier machines that way. Also? No being ambushed by fellahs too tough for him to tango with. Rick was a pretty tough _hombre_ himself, but some of the mooks running around this joint had _serious_ muscle.

"All right, Doctor," Gluskin set him down and pulled the black sack off of his head. Rick wasn't sure what the fuck the black bagging was for. He hoped it meant Gluskin intended to release him back into the wild, but who knew with these crazy types, "Now, keep your voice down. She's resting. And she's very sick."

"You got it, buddy," Rick said at normal volume. Gluskin shushed him, practically hissing, and Rick put up his hands (bound together at the wrist) in defense, "Sorry."

Gluskin carefully opened a door and Rick immediately saw the problem – the patient was wearing a wedding dress. That right there was probably enough to lay a man out, but after his initial eyeful, Rick had a better idea of what was going on. The blood stains on the dress weren't random spatter. It was bleed through. _Yowza_, what had Gluskin been getting up to here? Setting up a rival practice, looked like!

Gluskin went to 'her' side and took up her hand, patting it gently, "I've brought the doctor, darling. Everything will be all right."

'She' moaned, and Rick noted how pale 'she' was. Well, now or never. He approached the bedside and bent down to get a better look, recoiling and waving a hand. Yep, _infected_. Badly. _How_, though? He moved down to the foot of the bed and grabbed the hem of the dress, and Gluskin made a noise of protest.

"Please, doctor! Her modesty!"

"I'm a doctor, buddy. I see this kinda thing _alllll_ the time. You can trust me!"

Gluskin didn't look convinced, but he nodded, and Rick pulled the dress up. Where blood had seeped through, he had to _peel_, and the patient moaned again. They sounded weak, and they were probably on their way out, but that didn't mean Rick wasn't damned curious.

"Holy _mackerel_!" Rick said. He could feel his balls retreating up inside his body. It wasn't so much that Gluskin had excised the man's junk; it was the _way_ he'd done it. The brutality of the cut had probably damaged a lot of organs, and if that wasn't enough? The way he'd been stitched back up made Rick think ol'Gluskin didn't actually want his _gal_ to pull through. Some of the insides were poking out between the rough, wide gaps in the stitches.

"Is it bad, doctor?"

"Well it ain't _good_," Rick said, covering the patient back up. He didn't need to peel back the top of the dress now. It was pretty easy to deduce that Gluskin had tried to give his lady a backalley boob job. Rick was sorta curious about what he'd used to fill in the tits, though. His own junk, maybe? That'd be pretty frugal, to be honest. Rick might adapt that kind of mindset into his own work.

"Is there anything you can do?" Gluskin asked, laying a hand on the poor fucker's clammy forehead, "_Please_."

Rick had an exit strategy, and he reached into the front of his apron. A little difficult with his hands bound, but his fingers weren't. Gluskin hadn't searched him – his exit strategy was sound. His could conceivably get the hell outta here. It would mean not having his Chris-Walker-B-Gone, but he was pretty confident that not even Walker would want to be anywhere _near_ this particular brand of crazy. Gluskin didn't even look bothered by what Rick was doing, and Rick dared to approach him, like he intended to console him, or confide in him. As he'd hoped, Gluskin leaned in to hear whatever it was Rick had to say.

"Pretty sure she's a goner, buddy," Rick said. His fingers curled around the plungers of a syringe each. It was the good stuff. He wasn't even sure how to pronounce it, but it had been locked up, and he'd tried a little and had a _blast_, so he figured it'd do the trick, "I mean you can try the whole plenty of rests and lots of fluids routine, but... well, do you want my honest opinion?"

Gluskin swallowed and nodded, and Rick leaned in so close he was talking into Gluskin's ear.

"I think you should take two of these and call me in the morning."

Rick jammed both syringes into either side of Gluskin's neck and depressed the plungers. Gluskin reacted pretty predictably, shouting and shoving Rick away. He landed on his ass and only managed to take one syringe with him, the other still lodged in Gluskin's neck.

"How daree... yoo... _ouuuu_," Gluskin had grabbed the extra syringe and yanked it out, but as he tried to advance on Rick, his speech slurred, and he couldn't quite get his legs under him. He folded after another step and grabbed at the bed, his face in limbo between rage and slack-jawed drooling. Rick calmly stood, dusting himself off and backing up to the doorway.

"I'll send you an invoice," Rick said, "It's gonna cost an arm and a leg, though. _Preeetttyyy_ sure you don't have insurance, buddy."

"Not... not _buddy_," Gluskin managed before his entire body gave out on him. He wound up facedown in his own drool.

"_Yeesh_," Rick said, looking at the dying man, who was glassy eyed and probably delirious, "Next time, come see me. I've got antibiotics, at least! I mean, I assume I do. Haven't figured out what's what up there, but heck, it can't be that hard!"

The man groaned and Rick laughed, waving him off, "_Flatterer_. Anywho. Take it easy. He's gonna be _perrr-ritty_ P.O.'d when he wakes up!"

_**Inspired by a picture drawn by miikpah on tumblr.**_


	8. Blood

Their birth had been an omen, a blessing in dark and troubled times. Men with money, cold, bloodless money had shooed their dying family away from the land that always been theirs. There was no paper that said so, no meaningless capital that had somehow lent them ownership. The mountain had given it to them, a pittance, a scrap, but everything to them. And the bloodless men had destroyed whatever hadn't been taken with them.

They had been conceived in the shadow of the mountain, but not born under it, the first of their blood not to be born with the mountain's whispers in their heads. The mountain was known to them. They saw it in dreams and heard it spoken of. They knew the mountain was in their blood, that the mountain had shaped them in their mother's womb, had made them for a great purpose, but such things were only words, and they were only children sitting at their grandmother's feet and suckling at their mother's breasts.

Those who did not know imagined their grandmother was blind, but she saw more than even mother did. She saw the truth of things, the meat and the bone and the blood, and she taught them how to see, too. How to _know_. The mountain had whispered to her these secrets, as it whispered them to all of the blood, but only grandmother could listen well enough to hear. Sometimes she cried, and they would try to comfort her, but she would reject them. Only mother could console her. Only mother knew how it felt, to be adrift in the awful _silence_, the absence of whispers. There were still the dreams, but the dreams were poor nourishment. Not enough.

As they grew tall and strong, grandmother withered. It made mother despair, and she entreated them every night to learn all they could from her. She might leave soon, become empty flesh, and they both dreaded that day. Had they been in their home, the home stolen from them, the home they would reclaim when they were old enough, mother explained how they might save grandmother from such an awful, tragic death. How she might live on inside of them. But they couldn't, here. Not in a _trailer park_. Not surrounded by sheep, blind and deaf and dumb to the reality of the flesh.

Mother had gone to work and grandmother had called them to her. She was fading, but still more ferocious than they could imagine any person could be. Grandmother had been stern and had called their tears and reluctance to obey her commands _pathetic_. Their minds were soft things, prisoners of the flesh, needing flesh but hating it. Minds were necessary, but just now they could not use them. It was her flesh that needed their attention, and it was their flesh that would give it.

They drank of her blood, and she told them how blood was the true currency, not the slips of paper their poor mother was forced to toil for. She told them how the toil was ruining her, and that they must take her place. Things were not as they ought to be, and the taint of their toil, the toil their mother struggled to protect them from, would grieve them greatly someday. But they had to be brave. They would eat her tongue and learn all she had spoken, and they would eat her liver and have their resolve renewed.

But her heart, they would save for her mother, for she would be the strength of the family, now. Their birth meant that the black heart of the mountain would beat again, and they would bear witness to it. They would midwife its bloody rebirth and they would see the world return to the true currency, the one truth. _Flesh_.

Grandmother had been patient with them and their clumsy hands, their timid cuts, and to her last she did not scream or quail or wince. They shared her tongue and liver, and they learned her words and their doubt was burned away, but the heart they saved. It was tempting, to take her strength for themselves. Grandmother's flesh was cooling, but she was still alive within them. It was her, they imagined, that stopped them from indulging their greed.

Mother had wept bitterly when she had returned, but she had drank of her own mother's blood and ate her heart, and once she had finished, her sorrow was gone. They imagined they could see grandmother in her eyes, looking out at them, proud. It was a comfort. Mother instructed them how to dispose of her empty flesh, and then she sent them out into the world. It was a terrible place, terrible and wonderful, and there were times, late at night, that they would talk about what they might do with their lives. Knowledge was a heavy burden, but it one that was exhilarating to carry, a weight that their minds bore up easily and eagerly. Perhaps they would be doctors. Perhaps they would be physicists. Cruel things were said to them in school: _inbred, hillbilly, cousin-fuckers_. Ignorant things. Once they had asked their mother who their father was,_where_ he was, what had happened to their clan.

She had only looked at them, and they had seen grandmother looking at them, and they had never dared ask again.

When they were men grown, they were still humble. Their mother kept them in the trailer park and they obeyed. However strong the temptation was to allow their minds to conquer their flesh, to let the bloodless money become their god, they stayed true. Mother truest of all.

She had eaten the heart.

When the dreams showed them the burning asylum, showed them the mountains stretching up, up, up until they blacked out the sun and blood pooled around their ankles, they knew it was time. Mother had known. Mother had laid herself out, as grandmother had done, and she had not needed to tell them what to do. It was not just her tongue and liver, not just her blood. No. She had birthed them, and so they had also taken her eyes to better see things as they were. They had taken her womb so they might know the pain of birthing something, of nurturing it, of true sacrifice.

And _her_ heart, _grandmother's_ heart, for strength. They would be tested. Though they were of the purest blood, though they had been born to the task of birthing the black heart of the mountain into the world, the world had tainted and twisted them. Purer vessels, emptier ones, they would play a larger role. They would be tempted to indulge themselves, but they would have to remain strong. They would have to remain midwives, and never be vessels themselves. They would guide events, and never hinder them.

They had called the police when their feast was done, and when they had finally stepped into the shadow of the mountain, they embraced each other and wept. It was not whispers they heard, as their mother and grandmother had said. To them, the mountain _sang_.


	9. Respect

Chris had hated him, at first.

He _needed_ to catch the apostle. Containment hinged on it, and containment was the crux of his mission. It had been going as well as to be expected, given the sprawling chaos of the asylum. Some others were helping him, not on purpose, but in their own broken and misguided way. It was _important_ vessels be separated from their heads: the Walrider needed the head, needed it above everything else, and others did not understand this, but dead was dead and he would have time to double back and clean up sloppy work once every single life was extinguished._Especially_ the apostle. Chris had known there was _something_ the Walrider was seeking. It wouldn't be wandering the asylum, _hunting_, if it wasn't_seeking_ _something_, some way to improve its situation. Some way to break its shackles. When Chris had flung the little pig with his little camera away from his sacred place, when he had seen Father Martin cooing at him, he had realized his mistake. Rage overtook him, sometimes, rage beyond his control. The memories flooded his brain, a tide of blood and screams, and only after it had washed over him and receded would he come back to himself. He had been committed to Mount Massive to be rid of the bloody tide, but they had turned it into a tsunami. Chris did not let it lay him low, not anymore, but he was unable to control it.

The apostle was what the Walrider sought, he had learned. And so it was the apostle that needed to die. The apostle needed to die above all others.

He would contain this. He was the only one who could, the only one who _saw_.

The apostle could see, too, but not all of it. Only what Father Martin revealed to him, a trickle of revelations, a series of gospels to make him a better host, a perfect vessel. Once he had seen enough, Chris knew it would be too late. Destroying the other vessels hadn't been a futile pursuit, and he would resume that task later, but the apostle had become his primary concern. And the apostle was a quick piece of shit with as much desire to evade Chris as Chris desired to catch him. He was quick and small, slippery, a nimble little shit that got better and better at slipping the net. And though the apostle was only a man, and though he rejected the sacred purpose Martin had assigned him, he was not without one. The apostle possessed the most sacred purpose of all.

_Survival_.

Chris embraced his own purpose. He understood what he had to do, and he understood that only he could do it. No one would help him, not on purpose. Most only got in his way. They were all fools, all blind to the truth, to _reality_, seeing only their own constructs.

There were moments when he had been able to taste his triumph. He could feel a strange charge in the air, and if he'd had any hair left on his malformed body, it would have stood on end. Catching the apostle, ending him, it would be _containment_. Not _full_ containment, that required_extermination_, but containment enough. There would not be another like the apostle. The Walrider would have to settle for something else, something not optimal, and some of those that evaded him had already been rejected. Minds too shattered, too selfish to be suitable hosts. That would be all it could choose from.

But Chris would always swipe at air. The apostle would jam himself into a vent, or he would squeeze through a space Chris couldn't even dream of getting one shoulder into. He would grasp after him, and though sometimes he might shred his coat or make him yelp, he never _got_ him.

It was becoming a problem. His lungs burned and the tsunami of blood dulled his perception, made him sloppy. Though he had peeled away the useless flesh that blurred his vision, he had not been able to fully repair the fractures in his mind. Fractures that had been turned into a great, yawning abyss by the 'doctors'. Meant to control him, to control the Walrider in turn, but they had not counted on how little Chris cared about pleasing them. He had realized his mission early, and he had overcome hardships before.

The mission, containment, that was everything. It was the _only_ thing. Everyone and every_thing_ was depending on him.

Chris had hated him, but the further the apostle got, the less Chris was able to justify his hatred. It wasn't the _apostle's_ fault that Chris couldn't catch him. Chris knew what it was like, to know in his heart that survival depended entirely on him. That nobody else would help him. That he would die if he stopped to breathe, even for a moment. And so even though the apostle made him gag on his own breath, made him vomit a foul accumulation of phlegm and bile after every near-miss, made him back track and loop around and physically tear himself a new path to get to him, Chris respected him. He was desperate to kill him, desperate to contain the Walrider, desperate to stop what nobody else cared to, but he respected the apostles grim determination to survive.

Chris might have helped the apostle, if things had been different. And Chris felt like a fool when he all but chased him down into the belly of the beast. He was ashamed that his fear of the Walrider kept him from pursuing right away. Chris paced by the elevator, coughing and spitting (a messy, inefficient task without lips), telling himself he was just catching his breath, building his strength for one last chase. He had no choice but to catch him, now. It had come down to this.

"Even the Soldier fears the Walrider."

"Yes."

Chris had never seen them so close before. Normally they kept out of reach, talking about him or to him from behind bars or a few levels above him. He ground his teeth together and growled. Any lackey of Father Martin deserved to die.

"He will be at peace soon. That will be his reward."

"Does he know it?"

"He does not known peace. Not as we do."

"I pity him."

"As do I."

One of them, the bald one, summoned the elevator. They had him flanked, and Chris didn't know which one to go for first. He'd seen them in action. They were fast, and if he went for one, it was a good bet the other would be carving him up from behind. Best wait for them to make the move, use their respectable aggression against them.

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."

"The Bible?"

"Yes."

"Amusing."

"Very."

The elevator chimed and the other twin, the one with more hair, pulled the gate open. Chris didn't move. Did they think he was an idiot? They'd slaughter him if he boxed himself in like that.

"You should hurry, Soldier."

"It won't be long now."

Chris wanted very badly to end the two of them, but they were making it difficult. He knew time was of the essence, now. Every moment he delayed was a moment that brought the apostle and the Walrider closer together. Every moment wasted risked a breach, a _catastrophic_ breach. Everything he had done, everything he had sacrificed, _years_ of suffering, it would be for _nothing_. And Chris had already experienced that. Chris had been _destroyed_ by it.

It was what had brought Chris to Mount Massive in the first place.

The two men backed away and Chris stomped onto the elevator, jabbing a button with a meaty finger and smearing blood on the panel. For once, they didn't say a word as Chris slid out of sight. They only watched. Chris would kill them later.

Returning to the basement made his guts turn over, but Chris ignored the feeling of dread. It wasn't just the Walrider that haunted the sterile white halls, but memories of what had been done to him. He had fought them at first, fought them _violently_. Just because he large didn't mean he was stupid. Chris had known jamming tubes up a man's ass and down his throat and into his _goddamn dick_ wasn't how you worked through PTSD. Immersing a man into a pod full of _fluid_, making him watch images that shredded his mind, none of that had _anything_ to do with healing.

It had helped him become what he was now, the only thing standing between the wide world and the Walrider, and he had eventually capitulated, but... the ghost of his struggles still haunted him. Vividly. Alarms were going off. Things were locking down, but he was unsure if it was automatic or if more useless security had arrived. Chris quickened his pace. It wasn't too late. Not yet. He had to find the apostle, had to end him. Not even Chris could batter down the doors on this level, and in that regard, the Walrider now had the upper hand.

As it happened, he and the apostle reached for the same doorknob, and it was the apostle who won out. He barrelled straight into Chris with a cry of dismay, and Chris had reacted on instinct, using his momentum to throw him further down the hallway. Back the way he had come. It was a straight shot. No loose vents, no open doors, _no escape_. Containment was in his grasp. The apostle turned over onto his back, sliding backwards, his eyes wide, his maimed hand scrambling for his camera. Some people thought cameras were truth tellers, but Chris knew better. Cameras lied, just like anything else.

It wouldn't matter soon.

He saw something strange on the apostle's face as he towered over him, grabbing for his throat. A strange sort of fear. Not _of_ Chris – he _was _afraid of him, of course, but that was a grim and resigned fear by now – but _for_ Chris. Chris was only confused for a moment before he understood. No one picked Chris up, not easily. Not since he'd been a child. He was too tall, too heavy, an immoveable object.

Not for the Walrider. For the Walrider, Chris was a ragdoll, a flimsy puppet, and _oh_ how the Walrider _relished_ making him dance at the end of his strings. Bones shattered and blood flooded his lungs, and Chris scrabbled desperately for something, anything to hold onto. He swung blindly into the air, and the Walrider buzzed all around him, shredding his nigh-impenetrable hide, turning him into a bleeding sack of crushed bone and pulverized meat.

For a moment, a tiny fraction of a second, his eyes met with the apostle. Chris saw something he did not expect, and it went with him into oblivion.

Not pity or vindication. Not fear or disgust.

Respect.

_**Credit for this chapter goes to BizarroVeR of ffnet, who requested Chris's impression of Miles as he pursued him.**_


	10. Frenemies

Miles had to admire the guy's dedication, if nothing else. For someone that sounded like they ought to be in an iron lung, he could haul _serious_ass, and the only reason he _hadn't_ caught Miles yet was because Miles could fit through spaces that Chris probably hadn't been able to fit through since he was a toddler. And maybe not even then. He wasn't the only one dedicated to killing Miles, either, but Miles had developed an appreciation for Chris's unique brand of antagonism. Others wouldn't shut up about it. Father Martin, the Foreskin Brothers, _Trager_. Just thinking that name made the stubs of his fingers throb, and he shoved that hate down. He was dead, so hating him was pointless.

Chris talked, but Chris didn't wax poetic about wanting to kill him. He was refreshingly up front about his murderous intentions.

He had to make a choice at the end of the hallway. There were signs. Chris's thick, labored breathing was practically on his neck, and by now he knew that a grab was coming soon. Left or right? Life or death? Miles saw 'VOCATIONAL BLOCK' and thought of the file about Father Martin, about the shut down art therapy program. Wouldn't that mean an _empty_ block? Empty, and filled with boxes, probably. Tight spaces. Difficult for Chris to navigate. He could lose him there.

Miles veered left and Chris's momentum drove him into the wall. Miles heard the signs he'd just read clattered onto the ground, and he heard Chris curse. There was probably a huge hole in the drywall, now. That guy was a fucking wrecking ball.

Chris was lagging behind him now, but Miles knew inertia would be on his side again. He dug in deep, deeper, and was practically airborne as he jammed his shoulder into a door that led into a courtyard. It flew open and Miles's feet didn't even touch the steps. He soared over them and landed hard on the concrete walk, sprinting for the Vocational Block. It didn't look like a high security area. Most of it was dark. He cleared the steps and yanked at the door, rattling the chains keeping it shut. Fuck. _Fuck!_

"Stop!"

Something about Chris's tone was weird, but Miles didn't have time to worry about someone who was trying to rip his off. How to get in? He could hear Chris's heavy boots striking the pavement, could hear his chains jangling. Window. There was a break in the window! Miles used his camera to smash away some shards – the glass was mostly outside of the building, like someone had tried to get out – and jammed himself into the opening. Any moment now, he expected to feel Chris's strong, crushing grip on his ankle. He expected to feel saliva hit his neck as he gurgled _little pig_.

Miles made it through with a gasp and turned over, eyes on the window, body ready to spring. But Chris wasn't there. He wasn't even looking in the window. What the... what? Shaking, Miles got to his feet and tentatively approached the window. Chris was standing in the middle of the courtyard, his hands on his thick thighs as he caught his breath. He was coughing, and the sound made Miles wince, but... why was he just_standing_ there? Miles had watched him beat out a pane of bullet-proof glass, before. A regular window wouldn't stop him. Miles zoomed in on him, but as always, his expression was inscrutable. He'd cut off too much of his face.

Frowning, Miles moved further into the building and wedged himself under a table, jotting down a quick note: _Walker won't come near this place. Past trauma? Wasn't in his file. And the glass was on the outside. Stop, he said. Something in here he wouldn't wish on me? Didn't know you cared, Big Guy._

He tucked his notepad and pen away and stayed in his hiding spot, thinking. It was probably just some past trauma he'd suffered in art therapy or something. Or maybe 'art therapy' had been code for something worse? That wouldn't surprise him. Well, whatever the fuck it was, he'd have a quick look around. At this point Miles knew that there were plenty of others just as dangerous as Chris, but none of them were as dedicated. There was probably just some lunatic who needed blood to paint or something. He could handle that. Sure.

Miles saw evidence of struggle, here and there, but never any bodies. Old blood and upended boxes, shattered chairs and doors hanging off their hinges, but no bodies. He found a couple of teeth near the stairwell and headed up. Still no Chris. It was giving him a false sense of security. What he needed was to find a way to shut this place down, but fuck if he hadn't earned a breather, right? He peeked out on the second floor, found it dark, and didn't like his chances. He only had one battery left, and he wasn't sticking around long, anyhow. At the third floor landing he paused, considered making a note, but about what? He hadn't actually found anything. The absence of 'anything' was making him uneasy, but it wasn't worth writing down.

He opened the door. Lights. He'd look around and then make his way back downstairs, back to admin. That seemed like Chris's base of operations, so maybe he'd already headed back there. It might even be smooth sailing! Miles might've chuckled to himself if he hadn't come across something that made him wince and back up a step. Well that was... _new_. Someone had arranged bodies to mimic a birth. He might've called it crude if there weren't so many intimate little details. Chris had the right idea: fuck _this_ place. He was going back to admin. Whatever was going on in this building, he'd leave the guy to it.

Miles turned and walked straight into someone, someone who grabbed his shoulders and headbutt him with enough force to turn his legs into jelly.

"Darling, _there_ you are!" was what Miles heard before the guy hit him again and made things go dark.

Cold water brought Miles around with a gasp, though when he tried to sit up and wipe it out of his face, he found that he was tied down. Tied down, flat on his back, and it was... it was kinda _cold_.

"I'm so sorry for that, darling," the voice speaking to him was smooth and kind, and slightly mangled by a lisp, "But it's important you be awake for this!"

"The fuck...?" Miles asked, shaking his head. He strained against his bindings again, and then realized why he was cold. It wasn't the water. It was because he was naked, "What the fuck!? _WHAT THE FUCK_!?"

Nudity was jarring enough, but the man looking down at him had a long, gleaming knife, and the table was sticky with blood. Just when Miles thought he experienced the worst of it, he found something _brand new_. There was a bright light shining on him, on the table, and it made the rest of the room hard to see. There were discarded bodies. And his camera had been turned towards him, though the light was off. Well, at least this psycho wasn't wasting his batteries. Where the fuck were his clothes?

"Please, darling," the man sighed, stroking Miles's forehead, "You mustn't use such foul language. Children will repeat anything they hear their parents say."

Miles whipped his head around, his heart in his throat. Oh, Jesus wept, how had a _child_ gotten in here!?

"Daring, what...? Oh! Oh, dear, no!" the man grasped Miles's hand, "It's wonderful to see that you have such a strong maternal instinct, but there are no children. Not _yet_. Not until after the wedding."

Miles didn't know if he was relieved or not. _Not yet_, he'd said. And a wedding? Well, Miles had bad news for him about the chapel.

"Look, man," Miles said, "I really need to get back to—"

The man put a finger over Miles's lips and shushed him, and then trailed the finger down the center of his chest. It was a disturbingly loving gesture that didn't synch up with the knife, or being tied up on a bloody table.

"None of that matters now," the man said, "You'll be my bride, soon. We just need to... tidy things up for you. _Down there_. To make you into the woman you're supposed to be."

"Oh, fuck _you_," Miles couldn't stop himself from saying. First his fingers, now his dick? _Come on_. His sass was rewarded with a hard slap across his mouth, and Miles tasted blood.

"Don't back-talk me, you ungrateful bitch," his cloying tone had dropped a register, turned into a growl, "I'm going to make you beautiful! Maybe it will improve your attitude!"

The madman gripped his knife like he was going to stab Miles, but it was worse than that. He positioned it experimentally just below his navel,_aiming_. He was going to fucking fillet him from the bellybutton down. After everything he'd been through, Miles couldn't believe _this_ was it. Some creepshow who wanted a girlfriend was going to be what got him in the end. Not the guys who wanted to eat him. Not the guy who wanted to eBay his body parts. Not even the guy who wanted to rip his head off and put it on a shelf.

Miles couldn't help the scream of anticipation that tore out of throat as the man yanked his arm back. The follow through would be powerful. He would feel it, and he would keep feeling it, and he would _suffer_.

But he didn't get to follow through. There was a familiar roar and his attacker went flying, grunting as he hit a nearby equipment cage. _Walker_. Chris fucking Walker surged into view.

"You whore!" the man shrieked at Chris, "You ungrateful cunt! I knew you'd come crawling back!"

He came at Chris like a dervish, swinging his knife. Most of the wild slices glanced off of Chris's makeshift bracers, but he managed a few good ones, driving Chris back a few steps. Fucking shit, if not even _Chris_ could fight this guy...!

"Kick his ass!" Miles shouted. He would digest the absurdity of this situation later. If there _was_ a later. He was tied down. It would be kinda hard to run from Chris if he won. At least Chris wouldn't cut his dick off before he killed him.

"If you won't give me my babies," the man grunted, grappling with Chris. Grappling and _losing_. Slowly, _slowly_, Chris was wearing him down. The psycho was strong, but Chris was much stronger, and he seemed to know that, "I'll _take_ them!"

The psycho threw everything he had into shoving Chris back a step and then he used both hands to jam his knife into Chris's belly, sliding horizontally, trying to gut him. He actually managed a good few inches before Chris slammed him with a haymaker that would've knocked a lesser man's head off. The psycho dropped his knife and went staggering back against the wall. Chris took a moment, pressing his hand against the cut that was pretty close to disemboweling him.

"You selfish cunt," the psycho slurred, clawing at the wall, trying to get back up again, "_Give me my babies_!"

Chris looked away from his injury and stalked over to the psycho, and he kicked him in the ribs with what Miles assumed was a steel toed boot. Again, and again, and _again_. He grabbed the psychos doofy mohawk and smashed his head against the wall to stun him. Turning him around, Chris pulled one arm up into a stress position as he leaned his full weight on the psycho's back, pinning him with the gut he'd just tried to slice open. Crushing him. Pulling the arm up and _up_. It would snap soon. _Easily_. Like it was a dry twig and not the limb of a grown man. Chris put a knee between the psychos legs, forcing them apart, forcing him further off balance and at Chris's absolute mercy, and Miles wasn't sure he wanted to watch one man dismantle another. Clearly, there was some unresolved conflict between the two of them.

"Daddy, _please_."

Chris went still. He didn't let him go, didn't let up, but he didn't continue.

"Daddy, please stop hurting me. _Oh_, it hurts _so bad_."

Chris pushed away from him with a grunt, one hand immediately covering the ugly gash in his belly, and the psycho slid down the wall until he could curl into the fetal position. Rocking. _Crying_.

"Stop hitting me daddy, please stop," he babbled. His voice was small and slurred and it made Miles feel sick, "_Please, daddy_."

After almost a full awful minute of the psycho entreating his father not to hurt him, Chris stomped over to Miles and ripped away his restraints. Hands first, then his ankles. He threw a wad of something at Miles (his fucking clothes!) and then grabbed his camera. Chris turned it over, absently stuffing what was definitely a bit of _bowel_ back into the ragged but slowly healing hole in his belly, and Miles was sure he was going to crush it. Instead, Chris threw that at him, too. Maybe a little harder than was necessary.

"Go."

With the backdrop of a grown man sobbing, Miles hastily pulled his clothes back on and backed towards a door. There were a couple, but fuck it, he'd figure it out.

"Other door."

Miles had no idea why he trusted Chris not to tell him the wrong way out. Chris wanted to kill him. Chris had been chasing him for what felt like days. His big shoulders were sagging, now, and he cast what Miles _swore_ was a pitying look at the psycho who had nearly gutted both of them. It probably wasn't in his best interest to run around until the gash on his abdomen healed. It was as good a time as any to get a head start.

He felt like maybe he should say 'thank you'. Fuck, he almost felt like _waiting_ just so Chris could chase him out. That was nuts, though. Completely nuts. Chris wanted to murder him, and that was probably what this was about. He'd called dibs, or something. He wanted to catch Miles under his own power. Some weird, fucked up sense of honour. Sure. Miles didn't think that was it at all, but it was the only thing that didn't make his brain hurt.

Miles swallowed hard and ran for it. He had to get the fuck out of this horrible place. He had to stop whatever had happened here from spreading.

He decided, once he'd left through a door Chris had clearly battered down in an attempt to get to him, not to write anything down about what had happened. They'd just... take a Mulligan on that one.

_**Credit for this chapter goes to WinnieTheFatPooh of ffnet, who requested a chapter featuring Miles and Eddie, and gave me the option to involve Chris Walker.**_


	11. Animal Assisted Therapy

Father Martin was the first to meet the cat. He was out in the courtyard, inhaling the charged air. A storm was brewing over the mountains, a storm just for them, just for this moment, and he could feel it in his blood. It would take quite awhile to reach them, and Father Martin imagined god was keeping hold of the storm, lashing it in place until the time was right to unleash it. He closed his eyes and took another deep breath, allowing the serenity of the moment to flow through him. There was much work to do. So much.

He felt it before he heard it and looked down in alarm, taking a step back. Only a cat. An ugly old tomcat with one eye and matted grey fur. It meowed at him plaintively, arching its back and flicking its tail, and Martin smiled. He bent down and obligingly itched the cat's hindquarters, eliciting a rusty purr almost the moment his fingers touched fur.

"What a fine little gentleman you are!" Martin cheered. He bent down and scooped the tom up, and it settled in his arms, purring away, "A nice bath and a saucer of milk. That's what you need. Oh! Perhaps some tuna from the kitchens. Yes, yes, we'll have you all squared away."

His archangels, his guardians, they peered at him and then each other when he made his way inside. They could not see it, did not know that _he_could, but their bloody wings rustled impatiently, saying out loud what they only thought. It was all right. There was time for this. Even the smallest creatures deserved tenderness, and what was more representative of god's infinite mercy than a roiling storm preceded by a purring cat? He would try to explain, but he did not think they would understand.

Father Martin bathed the cat, who suffered the indignity as a saint might, and while he sullenly licked himself, Martin produced food. The tomcat greedily gobbled down the offering while Martin stroked his damp fur and hummed.

"There is work to be done."

"A great deal."

"What would you have us do?"

Martin sighed and planted a gentle kiss on the tomcat's head, and he moved to walk with his guardian angels. Their wings dripped blood on the floor, leaving trails that only Martin could see. When he looked over his shoulder one last time, the cat was gone.

Frank found that he wasn't alone in the kitchens, not entirely. There was a _cat_ there, and it gave him pause. How long had it been since he'd seen a cat? Seen any animals at all? Once they'd taken him down, down, down into the guts of the asylum, there hadn't been windows. No outside recreation, no art therapy. Only pain and blood and _meat_.

Cat's were made of meat, weren't they? Same as everything else. Not as much, no, barely a meal, but meat was meat and the cat would taste_different_.

"Here, kitty," he crooned, prowling towards it. The cat focused it's one golden eye on him and went still, flicking his tail, measuring Frank's intentions. Would the cat recognize another predator? Or was it as dumb as everything else in the building? Easy prey, easy meat. He'd never go hungry again, "Heeeerrree kitty kitty..."

Frank lunged and the cat darted away, and Frank let out a scream of frustration. He tried to chase the cat, but it darted up into a vent. Frank could've fit, but then he'd leave his stew and it would be _ruined_.

"Stupid pussy!" he shrieked after it, "Fuck you!"

Rick paused when he heard noise in the vents. It wasn't a new noise – some of the smaller, slimmer patients were using them like their own personal subway station – but usually they didn't meow in distress. Not that he'd heard yet, anyway. Curious, he pulled a chair over to a vent and pulled the cover off, and raised his brows when one lone eyeball reflected the light from the room back at him. For a brief moment he wondered if someone was about to cut his face off, but then the eyeball's owner came into the light, and Rick laughed.

"Whoa there, buddy," he set the vent cover aside and carefully lifted the cat out of the vent. The ugly old tom purred and nuzzled his head against Rick's chest, "Yeah, love you to. How the heck'd you get in here, huh? Didn't know we'd okayed a veterinary wing."

His hand automatically ran the length of the cat, occasionally paused to gently scratch his head and even slide along his ratty tail. He didn't smell bad, at least, which suggested the cat had been recently bathed. There was nothing around Mount Massive for miles. Maybe a secret pet of one of the patients? So much shit fell through the cracks around here, it wouldn't shock him.

Rick set the cat on wheeled cart, and laughed when he almost immediately made a toy out of one of the fingers laying on it. They were still warm.

"You like those, huh?" he said, "To be honest, I completely forgot to get them on ice, so I'm not super sure they're gonna hold onto their value. Live and learn! Speaking of – I gotta check on that guy. He had a real _squirrely_ look on his face. Could be trouble."

Rick didn't move, however, and laughed his ass off when the cat batted the finger right onto the floor.

"I feel yah, buddy," Rick said. He whirled when he heard a crash and some shouting, and ran to check on his investments.

Chris had been irritated by Rick from the beginning, but this little fortress he'd made for himself on 'high ground' was causing him some serious issues. The only way in, it looked like, was the elevator. Chris had access to a lot of the building, but this elevator wasn't included. He was glaring at a section of ruined stairs that he was sure wouldn't hold his weight if he jumped on it when a cat almost _materialized_ in front of him.

How the fuck had a cat gotten in here? How was it _still alive_? He saw the cat wriggle it's fuzzy ass and Chris backed up a step.

"No," he said firmly, putting his hands out to protect himself, "_No_, cat."

It pounced and landed easily on his shoulder, and barely a second passed before a massive sneeze exploded out of Chris. It dislodged the cat, and Chris irritably wiped thick mucus off of his face with one hand, flicking it at the wall and wiping the remainder on his thigh. He was allergic to cats, and for some reason, cats _loved_ him. Even now, the one-eyed tom was purring and rubbing against his boots, getting fucking cat hair all over him.

Chris shoved the cat away (gently) with his boot. It came back. He repeated the action more forcefully, but the cat just pranced back, purring, flicking his tail, entreating Chris to love him. Chris bellowed at the cat, waving his arms. The cat blinked at him, slowly. As though to communicate not only was it _not_ afraid, it was _deeply offended_ that Chris thought it might be.

"Fuck off," he told the cat, stalking away from it. It followed him. Chris ignored it as best he could, but when another messy sneeze startled his quarry, Chris had had enough. He grabbed the cat around the middle and held it away from himself at arm's length. His eyes were watering, and the hole where his nose had been was oozing mucus at a horrifying rate. Chris kicked a door open and tossed the cat into a courtyard, slamming the door behind him.

"Stupid cat," he muttered to himself. He could hear the cat meowing plaintively at the door, but Chris ignored it. It wasn't safe inside, anyway.

Eddie was very frustrated. Nothing was turning out the way it was supposed to. No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, they kept_leaving_ him. They were ungrateful whores, the lot of them, but it still hurt. Wasn't he enough for them? Wasn't he worth it? He was the perfect man, and they rejected him. _Selfish_. He'd been turning the vocational block into a paradise, just for them, all for them, and they still whined and complained. They ran and they shouted insults at him.

They just didn't know what was good for them. And they hung with the rest for their trouble.

He jumped when something light invaded his lap, and his eyes went wide when he saw what it was. Eddie had tried to nuture some kittens abandoned by their mother, once. They had been left underneath the crawlspace of their awful old house, and he'd brought them food and water. He'd cleaned them and cleaned up after them, and he'd been so gentle, so kind. Not like father. Not like his uncle. He would never be like them.

And they had made him watch, one by one, as they brutalized them. Eddie had tried to keep them a secret, but he'd failed them.

"Hello there," Eddie said, bringing the cat in close to his chest, "Aren't you a pretty kitty?"

The cat purred in response, bumping it's head up against his hand, and Eddie grinned.

"You _are_," he said, "Come on. I know what will make you even _prettier_."

He stood and carried the cat into his nursery, a work in progress, and set the cat inside one of the sturdier cribs. The cat regarded him reproachfully as Eddie presented it with a tiny dress.

"See?" Eddie said, "I think it's just your colour, too. Oh, the children will _love_ you, Patches!"

Patches was... rather disagreeable about putting on his dress, but once he was in it, he calmed right down, his ears flat against his skull. Eddie smiled and reached down to pick him up, but Patches wouldn't have him, this time. Patches squalled and scratched and twisted out of his grip. Eddie wouldn't have let go if Patches hadn't dug his claws into the tender side of his face, but Patches did and Eddie yelped, dropping the cat. The last he saw of Patches was a flash of pink as he bolted out the door.

They always left him, Eddie thought darkly. _Everyone_ did.

Waylon couldn't move. He'd nearly been mutilated, nearly been _hung_, and only pure chance had seen him through it. Exhilarated as he was that Eddie was dead, that experience had been... he didn't know. He was glad he was alive, but _now what_? How was he supposed to go on from this? Lisa. His boys. They were all he had here, the only thing keeping him sane, and even that felt like it was being wrenched away from him.

He cried out when something warm pressed against him, and broke down into a hoarse laugh when he saw what it was. Oh, Christ, _really_? The cat meowed at him, sounding miserable, and Waylon wiped a shaking hand over his face, clearing away his tears.

"You poor guy," Waylon said. The cat agreed with him, and Waylon carefully removed the frilly dress, trying not to think about how Lisa had been joking about trying for a girl before he'd taken this job. He'd shot back that he was game, if only for a hat-trick of boys. The tears started to spill down his face again, and he threw the tiny dress as far away from him as possible. The cat hopped up into his lap and Waylon couldn't help but envelop it in a hug, muffling a wretched sob with its tiny, thrumming body.

He didn't know how long he sat there in the gloom, sobbing and clutching a cat, but he was grateful for it once the moment passed.

"I gotta get outta here," he said, "You should, too."

The cat stuck with him for a little while, but one moment he was there, and the next, he was gone. Waylon tried looking for him, and he tried probably longer than was healthy for him. Eventually he gave up, silently hoping that he hadn't imagined the cat to begin with.

"Good luck," he said to thin air, feeling foolish.

_**Kirity on AO3 suggested a cat prowl the grounds of Mount Massive.**_


	12. Hurt

The TV was on, but Chris wasn't watching it. Not really. Hailey was on the floor, too close to the TV, but he didn't think she was watching TV, either. She was coloring. He didn't even know what TV show it was. It was muffled, all white noise that wasn't important. He was getting better at relearning how to habituate noise. How to ignore it completely and not think it was a bomb or a gun.

"Chris! Hello! Are you hearing me?"

"Huh?" he looked up, blinking.

"Jesus, Chris."

"Sorry," he said automatically. He was sure he'd said that word more often than any others since he'd been back. Sarah was trying really hard, but he knew he was wearing her down. He wasn't the same person anymore. Chris tried to be, but he couldn't even visualize who he had been before the war. He felt like he'd been thrown into a machine and spit out the other end some kind of...

Fingers snapped in front of his face, and he jumped, scowling.

"Don't look at me like that," Sarah said, "You can't... I'm trying to talk to you!"

"I'm sorry."

"Can you take out the trash?"

"Yeah, I will."

"Now, Chris."

"I'll do it!"

"_Now_."

Chris sighed and heaved up out of his chair, favouring his fucked up leg. It hadn't been too bad this week, but it was still stiff. Still sore. He was still waiting on the VA to help him out with the medical bills. At this point he'd take even a quarter of what he'd been promised at sign up, if only so he could get back to the doctor. The meds he did have barely worked, and he hadn't been able to really keep on top of PT after his knee replacement. Hailey needed new clothes. Sarah had talked about a second job, about dancing again, and they'd had a big fight about it. He'd promised her she wouldn't have to dance anymore. It had been five years. They were going under. Slowly, but very steadily.

Sarah could make a hell of a lot more dancing than he could sitting on his ass doing nothing. The only bonus of the current situation was that they didn't have to pay anyone to babysit, though he saw in Sarah's eyes, sometimes, that she didn't want him to be alone with their daughter. His outbursts had only been at night, though. And he would never hurt Hailey. Or Sarah. _Never_. Scared the shit out of them, yeah, but nothing more than that.

Chris felt like both of them were staring at him as he limped his way over to the trash can. It should've been taken out yesterday. She'd probably asked him to do it then. Chris hated how bad things were. The things he'd done in Afghanistan... he'd promised himself that he'd be _happy_ to take out trash. That he'd do dishes and clean toilets and he'd do it with a smile, because at least he wouldn't be killing people. Or telling other people to kill people.

He'd be with his little girl and the mother of his little girl. Maybe he'd stop being a huge pussy and marry her. He'd get everything together, better than it had been.

Instead, he'd gained about fifty pounds and lost every job he'd managed to get. He wasn't very mobile, and as it turned out, he wasn't stable, either. He'd nearly broke a guy's arm at his last job. He'd made some shitty comment about Hailey probably not being his kid and all Chris had seen was red. _Nobody_ got to talk to him that way, and they certainly didn't get to talk about Sarah or Hailey, either. He'd _killed_ people. He'd killed so many people and they had no right to talk to him with such _disrespect_.

Assaulting people wasn't a smiled upon method of dealing with that disrespect, as it turned out.

Chris tied up the trash and headed out, limping down the hall and pausing by the stairwell. He should take the stairs. If he didn't work his knee, it wasn't going to loosen up. It was going to get too tight to bend, and he'd have to go back to using his cane. But he was pretty much out of painkillers, and if he jarred it...

With a defeated sigh, he waited for the elevator. It was only three floors, and he needed the exercise, but fuck it. Chris leaned on the panelling in the elevator and picked up his bum leg, not even wanting to put weight on it if he could help it. Whenever he started to get angry about his leg, he thought about Hodgeson. _That_ poor fucker had no legs at all. He was the one who'd stepped on the IED. Chris had just eaten a little shrapnel with the better part of one knee. If it hadn't been for that shrapnel, he'd probably still be in Afghanistan. He would only have seen _pictures_ of Hailey. He wouldn't have held her moments after she'd been born, at once the ugliest and most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his life.

He hobbled out into what passed for a lobby in their building and tried not to notice the unmanned security desk. Sarah deserved better than this. Hailey, too. Chris tossed the garbage bag into the dumpster just outside the building, but didn't immediately go back inside. He leaned on the dumpster instead, running his fingers through his short-cropped hair and trying to keep his shit together. He'd been a fucking butcher and they'd pinned medals on him. He had slaughtered men like pigs and they called him a hero.

That was how they justified treating him like they were, he supposed. Like nothing. They called him a hero and he was supposed to be grateful they hadn't called him a monster instead. There was a picture that Sarah liked, that he couldn't stand, with him trim and fit in his uniform and Sarah beaming at him. They both had a hand on her belly, on Hailey, and he knew why she liked it. That picture was what they were going to be – the cane he was leaning on was barely visible, his knee not even an issue. The picture was what they might have been. Not now. Now he was a fat, unemployable shit whose only redeeming quality was that he was able to watch his daughter while his girlfriend worked.

Leaning on a dumpster in an increasingly too-tight Marines T-shirt and grubby sweats wasn't doing anything for him. He shuffled back inside, but before he could sit, Sarah intercepted him. Chris sighed heavily without meaning to. What _now_?

"I need to talk to you," she said, flicking a look at Hailey, who was sitting up now, absorbed in a cartoon, "In the bathroom."

Chris didn't move for a moment, watching her go, and he glanced at Hailey, too. Everyone had a _discussion spot_. His parents had used the bedroom, though it hadn't done much good. When he was old enough to be curious, he'd go listen at the door, though by the time he was old enough to really understand what they were talking about, the allure of spying had lost all its lustre. They couldn't use their bedroom because the door didn't shut. It hadn't been the same since Chris had kicked it in one night, convinced he was storming a building. Hailey looked too absorbed by TV to spy, though. But how many times had his parents, had _any_ parent thought the same thing?

He followed, dread churning in his stomach. Had someone served an eviction notice? He could've sworn they were on top of the basics, if nothing else. The bathroom was small, and it was pathetically small once he lumbered in, closing the door behind him. Sarah had her arms folded over her chest and she wasn't looking at him. She looked upset. Oh, god, she was going to leave. She was going to take Hailey and leave, and he'd have nothing left.

"Sarah—"

"Chris, I'm pregnant."

Chris blinked slowly and she set what he had to assume was a recently peed on pregnancy test on the sink. Now he knew why she'd wanted him out. He wanted to be happy. He really did. He wanted to lift Sarah up and laugh and tell her he loved her.

"_Shit_," he said instead.

"I know," Sarah said.

Neither of them said anything, but they didn't really need to. The pill was expensive. Their sex life was in the toilet thanks to his meds, and if he_did_ manage to get it up, fumbling with a condom took too long and... it hadn't been very spectacular the last time, but spectacular wasn't a requirement when it came to conception. God, he hated all of this. They used to fuck like _crazy_. She had loved how big he was, how strong, how it seemed like he weighed nothing to her. Now they left the lights off, and they barely spoke or laughed, and usually one of them would just make a (gentle) excuse to call it off. The other would agree, like their feelings weren't hurt, and they would just go to sleep.

"I... I'm gonna go to Planned Parenthood," Sarah wouldn't look at him, "See if they can help."

Chris nodded and swallowed hard.

"I'll go with you."

"Someone has to watch Hailey."

"Sarah," he started to talk, but he couldn't manage anything. Instead, he just pulled her into an embrace. She was stiff at first, but she melted into the hug, her shoulders jerking as she cried into his broad chest. Chris was pretty sure he might throw up, but he kept it together and just stroked Sarah's hair, rubbing her back. Once she'd gotten it out she leaned back, and she cupped his square jaw in her hands.

"We're gonna be okay," she told him, her brows drawn sharply together, "We are. Do you believe me?"

"I want to," was the most honest thing Chris could say. She kissed him, and he kissed her back, and it was the last kiss they ever shared.

They both read to Hailey that night, a special occasion that had made her exceptionally happy. She'd fallen asleep before the end, and they'd slipped away to their own bedroom. They didn't talk, back's to each other. Chris imagined an invisible wall of baggage building up between them, segregating the sad, creaky mattress that did nothing for his back. He wasn't even thirty and he felt fifty, falling apart from the inside out.

When Chris closed his eyes, he was back in Afghanistan. The IED had just blown apart Hodgeson's legs and he was pretty fucked up himself, but he would be _absolutely_ fucked if he let anyone else get slaughtered. All he had was his knife. It didn't matter why. He would've used the knife even if an entire armoury was at his back. They were going to suffer, these motherfuckers. War wasn't personal, but blowing off his friend's legs, probably killing him? _That_ was personal. Chris was _making_ it personal.

Someone shouted at him to stop and he ignored them. Stop, his _ass_. They'd go get reinforcements, or they'd just pick them off themselves. They were out in the open, vulnerable, _decimated_. All Chris could think about was blood. Red on red, blood on blood, he would gut them like the _pigs_they were, like the butcher _he_ was.

One of them was scrambling away from him. He was hurt. Hurt by his own IED. Chris knew his knee was shredding more and more with every step, but he didn't feel pain. The man screamed at him, already on his knees, begging, but Chris kicked him in the chest to lay him out.

"Please, no!" Chris felt like something was wrong. There was something about this that was out of place. Probably that this fuck wasn't dead yet.

"You blew up his legs," he accused, "You ruined his life! You ruined _mine_! I'll fucking kill you!"

"Oh, Jesus, please no!"

Chris buried his good knee into the pig's stomach and then started to beat on him. It was supposed to be a knife, but he must've dropped it. It didn't matter. He was two hundred and fifty pounds without his gear and it was all muscle. He didn't need a knife. He had killed men with his bare hands before. It occurred to him that this was someone's brother or husband or father, that this man was only doing what he thought he had to, same as Chris, but Chris hadn't blown off someone's legs. He had the decency to kill a man _clean_.

But there was nothing clean about this.

"Please," the man was crying, sobbing. He sounded like a fucking woman, "Please," English. Why was he speaking English? His accent was perfect. And where had his knife gone?

"_Daddy!_"

Chris was in the hallway, and Sarah was underneath him. She was bloody. There were teeth on the carpet. There was blood on Chris's hands. Hailey was standing in her room, looking out at the hallway, her eyes so wide with terror he could see the whites of them. She was clutching a ratty stuffed animal so tightly her tiny knuckles were white.

"Daddy, what are you doing to mommy!?"

He scrambled back with a strangled noise, and all Sarah could do was turn onto her side and vomit. Vomit _blood_. And more teeth. Oh no, oh no,_oh no_...

"Daddy?!"

Hailey wanted him, but she was too scared to go to him, in a horrible limbo that no little girl, no _child_ anywhere ever ought to be in. Oh, god, there was so much blood. Sarah was making an awful wheezing sound, and then she started to moan. The moan escalated into a strangled, short scream, and Chris finally got it together and scrambled for the phone. It all happened far, far outside of him, after that. He tried to hold or somehow comfort Sarah, willing her not to die. He'd destroyed her face. Crushed her ribs. Most of her teeth were on the carpet and not in her mouth.

Some policeman came and Chris didn't remember what they said to him. He could only stare at the blood. The awful matted carpet in their shithole apartment was a dark crimson, and they'd probably be able to cover up the bloodstains easily. Red on red. Blood on blood. Hailey was crying and they wouldn't let her near him. He might've said something to calm her down. He might've just thought about it. Four officers escorted him downstairs, all of them nervous, batons and tasers at the ready, but Chris didn't fight. He didn't have any fight left in him. He'd poured it all into Sarah. Sarah, who had been so sure everything would be okay. Sarah, who held his head in her lap those first few months after he'd come back and stroked his hair while he sobbed like a baby. Sarah, who had kissed the twisted, puckered scar on his knee and smiled wickedly, like she was turned on instead of disgusted.

Sarah, who loved him even though he was a worthless sack of shit. Sarah, who he loved back so ferociously he would've taken a man's arm off for insulting her.

He was at the hospital. Someone had cleaned the blood off his hands but it was still on his ratty shirt. Still on his grubby sweatpants. Chris stared at his hands, flexing them. He'd barely even abraded his knuckles on Sarah. They were a little red from the force he'd put into it, but he hadn't broken skin.

Not like he'd broken Sarah.

"Mister Walker?"

Chris didn't stop looking at his hands.

"Mister Walker. Chris Walker?"

He looked up and immediately looked back at his hands. Chris didn't recognize the man in the suit, and he didn't care about him. He flexed his hands. Not even sore. The suit sat next to him.

"Mister Walker, are you aware of the situation you're in?"

"Did I kill her?" Chris asked. His voice was far away, lost in the dull ringing in his ears. The IED had gone off years ago, but it might as well have been hours ago, "They won't tell me anything. They just put me in here."

"Well, she's in critical condition," the suit said, "And she lost the baby. You understand how serious this is."

Chris looked away from his hands. The suit was trying to look sympathetic, but his eyes were flat and dead. Like shark's eyes, Chris thought.

"I can help you, Mister Walker."

"Who are you?"

"I'm Jeremy Blaire, Mister Walker," Jeremy smiled. Chris dully observed that he had regular human teeth, not shark's teeth. It didn't suit him, "I can make all of this go away."

Chris stared at him. Maybe he still had a little bit of fight left. Maybe a lot. Who the fuck was this asshole? Why had someone let him in? He needed to be... sedated, or talking to a doctor. He needed to see Sarah. He needed to see _Hailey_.

"I can take care of the bills. Get some plastic surgery for your girlfriend, maybe a few trips to a dentist," Blaire said, "And I can take care of the lawyers, too. I can even make sure your girlfriend retains custody of your daughter—"

"Why _wouldn't_ she?"

Blaire smiled again. No shark teeth. There should've been rows and rows of them. Chris understood, then, what was happening to him. His fists clenched. His life was in ruins, and this asshole had come to take a shit on the rubble. Why?

"Smarter than you look, aren't you, Mister Walker?"

"Fuck you."

"You're the one who's going to get fucked, _Chris_," Blaire smiled wider, his dead eyes glittering, "You and your sad excuse for a family. You've already fallen through the cracks. Do you want your daughter in foster care? Do you want your girlfriend to go through life with a caved-in face? That'd make it pretty hard for her to get tips."

"What do you want?"

Blaire opened his briefcase – it probably cost more than everything Chris had ever owned – and slid out a folder. There were yellow and pink post it notes sticking out of it.

"Yellow for signatures," Blaire said, "Pink for initials."

"What is this?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yeah it fucking _matters_."

"You're voluntarily committing yourself to Mount Massive Asylum," Blaire said, "We have some revolutionary new treatments that you could _really_benefit from."

Chris grimaced. He wanted to protest that he wasn't _crazy_, but he'd just beaten his girlfriend half to death. He'd put her through a miscarriage. It sounded like he'd... he'd really done some _damage_. A lump formed in his throat but he swallowed it. He wasn't showing this pencil dick his ass. The print on the document was tiny, and it was worded in ways that made no sense to him. He flipped through it, seeing a lot of jargon that meant nothing.

"Can I see them?"

"No."

"Hailey, at least?"

"I don't think that's a good idea, Mister Walker," Blaire said, "Haven't you done enough damage to your family? Sign where the yellow flags are. Initials are marked with pink."

"You'll take care of them," Chris said. He didn't believe this corporate stooge, but at the same time? He _had_ to. There was no way he'd be able to take care of this on his own. Not from prison, or a psychiatric ward, or wherever he ended up. Maybe this guy was just a tool. Maybe they'd really, finally help him.

Maybe he could get his life back.

Chris started signing and initialling. Whatever happened, it couldn't be worse than what he'd already done.


	13. Buddies

Jeremy Blaire couldn't imagine anything more surreal than the moment he was in. Things were out of control. He wasn't even sure how it had happened. One minute, everything had been going according to plan, and the next...

"I'll find you, little pig."

Jeremy swallowed hard and covered his mouth and nose with both hands, convinced that Walker would hear his breathing, that he could probably hear his heart. He couldn't believe he was being _hunted_. Hunted by a guy who was physically strong enough to _literally_ rip people's heads off. Jeremy almost laughed whenever he remembered signing off on pushing Walker to level three even though the data suggested he wasn't going to be a candidate. He and Rick had joked about roiding him up putting him in pit fights with other inmates. And the way he'd responded to the treatments, well, they thought they might have a super-soldier side effect to sell off on top of the Walrider.

_Rick_. Jesus Christ, was Rick still alive? For his sake, Jeremy hoped he wasn't. Sure, he'd fucked the guy over, but...

They had been friends. Or at least whatever their version of friendship was.

"I know you're here."

He was so close, Jeremy could hear his laboured breathing, and he squeezed his eyes shut. If he didn't have both hands over his mouth, a whimper probably would've slipped out. All he'd seen when Billy's numbers started going up were dollar signs. Now all he could see was blood. So much fucking _blood_. He couldn't die here along with the rest of these animals, but it was starting to look like he'd have no choice. If the variants didn't tear him apart, the Walrider would. _God_, they had been stupid to think they could control it with people they'd personally broken. So _stupid_.

Chris snorted and swore under his breath, and he finally gave up, stalking out of the room and muttering military jargon under his breath. Jeremy couldn't bring himself to move or even breathe for _far_ too long, and when he finally did, he made an obnoxious, loud _gasp _for air. When he wasn't immediately yanked out of his hiding place, he relaxed. Okay. He was gone. Chris had a lot of other people to kill. He wouldn't remember Jeremy, would he? Jeremy was just another guy in a suit, and he'd seen plenty of those.

If he could just get to admin, he could get out. He knew the codes, and he still had his passkey. He'd give Walker credit for clearing the place out, at least. Jeremy wasn't the only person terrified of that ghoulish motherfucker.

Jeremy slipped out of his hiding place, wincing at how his shoes were creaking. Brand new. Leather. They'd given him away once already, but if he just left them here, some sick fuck would probably... masturbate in them, or use them as a toilet. And he didn't want to step in whatever was laying around on the ground, either. After a few more creaky steps, Jeremy removed his shoes but kept a hold of them. If nothing else, he could clobber someone with them. He could afford new ones. He could afford to buy the fucking company that made them. Maybe he would do that. Nobody had ever been chased by murderous psychopaths while running a shoe company.

He'd never been in a situation where his money meant nothing. It was _absolute bullshit_.

After about twenty minutes of sneaking, Jeremy was pretty sure he was lost. Since when had he ever toured the grounds? None of what happened above ground mattered. He hadn't given half a wet fart for the people in this dump. They were means to a very profitable end. In theory.

He turned a corner and froze. If he hadn't already pissed himself, he would have done it then. Chris Walker was just... standing there. _Waiting_. He tilted his head and the most chilling laugh Jeremy had ever heard gurgled out of Walker.

"_Blaire_," he rumbled, grinding the name between his exposed teeth. Jeremy's jaw worked but no sound came out. He visualized running, but his socks were rooted to the floor. Oh fuck, oh god, _he remembered_. Did he remember everything? The doctors had said he was catatonic most of the time thanks to all the drugs it took to keep him from rampaging, but maybe he'd been playing possum. Had he heard everything? Every joke? Every shitty comment they'd made about him and his broken family?

_Why can't you just shut the fuck up for once, Jer?_ Rick's voice came to him then, and somehow, it jarred him back into action. A decidedly unmasculine squeal came out of Jeremy and he threw both shoes at Chris. The first Chris batted away, and the second went so wide that it sailed over his shoulder, harmless.

"Sign here," Walker snarled at him, raising his hands, his fucking monstrous _paws_, "_Initial here_."

Jeremy didn't even know how he ducked in time. Walker's mitts sliced through the space he'd been occupying, and he even smashed out a chunk of moulding in the process. Jeremy was running, but he felt like a fucking cartoon character, the way his socks gave him no traction on the hardwood floor. He found enough purchase to pick up speed and Walker gave chase, his breathing wet and haggard.

_Good_, he thought wildly, **_Choke_**_, you fat sack of shit, __**choke on it**_.

Despite drowning in his own fluids, Walker was bearing down on him. Jeremy skidded around a corner and howled when a patch of unfinished wood flooring shoved splinters into his feet. It was incredible what a person could do under duress: Jeremy didn't even slow down, driving the splinters in deeper. God, even the ceilings were falling down around this dump! He was going to die here. He was going to get run down like a dog by a fat army vet who thought he had a third eye.

"Jer! Hang a right, buddy! Into the dumbwaiter!"

Had he imagined that!? Oh, god, Rick was alive! He was okay! Jeremy didn't know why he was helping him, but... but maybe he just wanted out, same as Jeremy? Why wouldn't he? It wasn't like he'd actually volunteered to be part of the Walrider program. He'd just... gone a little around the bend. They couldn't bring him up on charges without exposing their project, so into the project he went.

Rick wouldn't hold a grudge. They'd been golf buddies for _years_. They'd spitroasted a hooker together, for fuck's sake.

Jeremy slammed a door behind him, and Chris battered it down with both his fists in about two pounds. It was time enough for him to cram himself into the dumbwaiter and slam the door. Chris charged and grabbed the cage, and Jeremy noticed then that the links were warped. Had Rick done this before? Why? Was he taking in refugees or something? That... didn't seem like Rick. Jeremy screamed when Chris _yanked_ and the cage rattled, but up, up, and away he went.

"Jer!"

Oh, _shit_. Oh shit, he was... what the fuck had _happened_ to him!? He'd looked bad the last time he'd seen him, sure, but...! Rick grabbed Jeremy's lapels and hauled him out of the dumbwaiter, and then slammed him up against the wall. Rick had always been a weasely dude. Rangy, sure, but never _strong_. His drives were piss-weak. Not anymore. Hormone therapy! Better than P90X.

"How ya been, Jer?" Rick had a surgical mask on (kind of), but Jeremy could see him grinning underneath. Jeremy had inherited his money, and his teeth were perfectly white and even. Ricky, though, he'd clawed his way up from nothing. His teeth were just a little bit yellow, just a little crooked, and Jeremy had always liked that about his smile. It didn't look mass-produced. He'd always looked _sincere_ when he smiled, and it made him a _great_ fucking liar. Better than Jeremy by miles.

"Rick, I—"

Rick jabbed him in the guts, and when he doubled over, Rick grabbed Jeremy's collar and started to drag him down the hall.

"Yanno, Jer, I'm real glad you made it," Rick said. He sounded like he always did, sarcastic and smug, but he looked like hell and he wasn't wearing pants, "Because I've just been _dyin'_ to have a chat with yah!"

"Rick-!" Jeremy was stumbling along, barely able to keep up, but once he got his legs under him Rick turned on him again, grabbing his tie and then wrapping it around his hand twice, yanking up and forcing Jeremy onto his toes.

"You sold me out!" his smug tone was gone, and Jeremy saw fury in his eyes. _Eye_. What was that thing, some kind of... shitty steampunk cosplay? Rick had always had dubious taste.

"It wasn't personal, Ricky, you know that."

"_Wasn't personal?_" Rick repeated. He laughed, but it sounded more like a junkyard dog barking than a human being expressing merriment, "You called me _crazy_! You set me up, you _shit_."

"Jesus, Rick!" Jeremy gagged, trying to loosen the tie that Rick was slowly strangling him with. Rick slapped his hands away and he just held them up, leaning up on his toes to relieve pressure, "I... come on! You started tossing people into the program for no reason! And that memo about cagefighting inmates was the last straw—"

"That was a joke. _Our_ joke," Rick said, "You thought it was funny back at _your_ place. Whatsamatter, Jer? You only got a sense of humour after your dick's been sucked?"

"Hey- _ungh_!"

Ricky yanked down on the tie and Jeremy pitched forward, unable to keep his balance. He got a shot in the ribs for his trouble, and then Rick grabbed one of his ankles and started to drag him down the hallway. Jeremy could hear screaming. There was a lot of blood. Was that... oh god, was that _Fredrickson_ on a gurney with all his organs in a _bucket_ on the floor? Oh _god_. What was he _doing_ up here!?

"Rick, come on," Jeremy said, "I was just covering my ass! You would've done the same."

Rick looked over his shoulder at Jeremy, down at his own bare ass, and then back at Jeremy again. Jeremy almost laughed.

"You know what I mean."

"You fucked me over, Jer," Rick said, hauling him towards what looked like an operating table. Jeremy started to struggle again, but Rick was way, way too strong for him, and he got a real hard hit to the jaw for his troubles. When he stopped seeing stars, Rick had him all tied down, "Didn't even give me a damned reach around. Which ain't exactly outta character for you, let's just put _that_ out there in the universe."

"You're acting like a fourteen year old who got dumped," Jeremy said. This was completely terrifying, but aside from the fact that Rick looked like a B-movie monster and had him strapped to a table, he was still the same fucking guy, "I wasn't the only one who fucked you over! And you kinda fucked _yourself_ over, _buddy_. Signing your emails with _doctor_, who the hell _does_ that? _Crazy people_."

Rick chuckled and yanked off one of Jeremy's socks, yanking out a splinter or two in the process.

"You smell like a men's room," Rick said, "Ol' Wheezy has that effect on people. He's got a real shitty attitude, too. I told him to put on a shirt earlier and he almost climbed up the wall to get me. Didja see the big holes? Good thing that drywall ain't rated for 'obese abomination', huh?"

Jeremy said nothing. Of course Rick would try to piss off a thing that could rip off his head. Of _course_ he would. Rick knew just how to get under people's skin. Jeremy did too, but it took a lot more words and posturing. Rick just had a _talent_ for it.

"So what now?" Jeremy asked, trying to get some of that posturing to work for him, "Are you gonna kill me or...?"

"Yanno, Jer, I haven't decided yet!" Rick said, yanking off his other sock. And then his pants. Jeremy tried not to notice that his boxers had a large, dark piss stain, "I mean on one hand? You fucked me over. But on the other, Jer, I got a real _kick_ outta watchin' you run away from Biggie Smalls. Gonna be hard to do that with all this crud in your feet, right?"

Rick brandished a pair of tweezers that looked extremely unsanitary and started to yank out splinters, really digging in for the ones buried deep. Jeremy tried not to scream – he was only removing splinters – but he had never been great with pain and a few pathetic whimpers snuck out.

"So here's what I'm thinking," Rick worked steadily, ripping out splinters and letting them drop on the floor, "I'm gonna cut off your toes and then see how well you run, _or_ we can play a guessing game."

"How about you just let me go?" Jeremy said, "I'm sorry you got fucked over, Rick, but this isn't the way to do it. We could both get – _ow_! – get outta here. Sue the _pants_ off of Murkoff."

"I've had an epiphany since I became a doctor, Jer," Rick admired his handy work and turned around, metal clinking against metal as he sifted through more tools, "We're in the wrong market. You know how you make _real_ bank?"

He turned around, brandishing what looked like fucking _hedge clippers_. Jeremy had never trimmed a hedge in his life, so he could've been wrong.

"Black market organs!"

"Holy shit, Rick," Jeremy felt all the spit in his mouth dry up, "Rick, no. _Ricky_. C'mon, it's Jer. It's _me_, buddy."

"I know it's you, _pal_," Rick put a finger on Jeremy's bare heel and slid up, making Jeremy curl his toes inwards, and then Rick pinched his big toe with his thumb and forefinger. The clippers glinted menacingly, "Pretty messed up what Walker calls you, right? Little pig? From that story he read his kid. This little piggy went to market..." Rick wiggled his big toe and moved down to the next one, "This little piggy stayed home."

"Ricky."

"This little piggy had roast beef!"

"Ricky, please, I'll do anything you want-!"

"This little piggy had _none_."

Rick grabbed the clipper and positioned them around Jeremy's pinky toe, and Jeremy was already shrieking.

"Take my wallet! Anything! Anything, Ricky, please, _don't_-!"

"You are jumpin' the gun on this piggy, Jer," Ricky said, "But have it your way. _This_ little piggy went-!"

He jammed the blades of the clippers together and Jeremy bawled. The toe fell on the ground, and Ricky spent a few minutes looking for it, talking about... Jeremy didn't care. He could feel his pulse in his pinky toe. He could still feel it even though it wasn't there, and the world was starting to grey out. Rick slapped him a few times, and though Jeremy fought for unconsciousness, he lost. He was sobbing, now.

"Boy, you are a real panty waste, ain'tcha?" Rick said, tossing the pinky toe up in the air and catching it like it was a coin, "I've harvested organs from some of the higher ups and they barely even screamed. Much as I wanna see Chris Walker sit on you until you give him your lunch money, Jer? I think you're gonna have to pick a number."

"W...what? A number?"

"Pick a number or I'm gonna toss you back downstairs."

"What—"

"Between one and... ten! Sure! You got at _least_ ten major organs, right?" Rick shrugged, "Probably more."

"Ricky, pl-"

Rick jammed his own toe into his mouth and then placed a hand over his lips, keeping him from spitting it out, "You call me Ricky _one more time_, you WASPy piece of _shit_, and I'm gonna make a necklace outta your teeth. You feelin' me?"

Jeremy nodded, fighting the urge to vomit. When Rick let go of his mouth, he turned his head and spit. The vomit followed soon after, pooling next to his head on the table. This was... _degrading_, he was realizing. This was what it felt like to be someone's toy.

"Cool beans!" Rick said brightly, "Pick a number!"

"What... what organs are... which numbers?"

"That'd ruin the surprise. Pick a number, buddy!" he started making beeping noises and wiggling his hands around, "No whammies! Nooooo whammiiiieess... _STOP_!"

He gestured dramatically to Jeremy, giving him his cue to say his number.

"F... fo... _five_!"

"_Ohhh_, five! Nice choice! Pretty sure you don't need that, anyway."

"What's five?" Jeremy asked, cringing away from Rick as he approached with a syringe, "What's five, Rick? _What's five?_"

"I'll figure it out once I'm in there," Rick said, "Normally I need folks awake for these procedures so they can appreciate my hard work, but that's never really been your _thing_, huh Jer? Hard work, I mean. Sleepy time. It'll be a surprise! You _love_ surprises!"

Jeremy flinched as Rick jammed the syringe into his neck, and the last thing he saw before the world faded out was Rick trying to spin a scalpel in his hands like it was a baton. He dropped it on the floor.

When Jeremy woke up, everything was black. Dark. He panicked and tried to move, and had to bite his lip against searing agony on his back. Hands shaking, he moved around his person, dreading what he would – or wouldn't – find. Everything was in place, at least in front. Even his wallet was still in his pants (which Rick had put back on), and he'd... he'd found his shoes, somehow. Or someone's shoes. They fit strange. Like...

His toe. _Toes_? Had Rick taken more off? Jeremy decided not to check, and he was able to trace the worst pain around to his back. _Low_ on his back. It was raw and wet, blood soaking through his shirt and his suitcoat. What had Rick removed? Had he fucking... had he taken out one of his kidneys!? Jeremy couldn't help it: he started to laugh. It was unbalanced and hoarse, and it kept shifting into strangled sobs, but Jeremy didn't care anymore. Rick had removed a kidney and turned him loose. Was that his way of saying they were even? Jeremy felt around blindly and found a doorknob in front of him. Still giggling, he cracked it open, and started to laugh even harder.

He was back in admin, but that wasn't why he was laughing.

Rick had nailed two pinky toes to the wall, serving as eyes for a smiley face drawn in blood.

**_Credit for this goes to the tumblr Outlast fandom as a whole - you did this, guys. I hope you're proud of yourselves._**


	14. Near Miss

Waylon wished he had _some_ idea about what was going on. He didn't even know how he was still alive, how he'd not been killed _before_ this. Even before things had gone very wrong, he didn't know what had stopped them from just... just flat out _murdering_ him. The people running this horror show were more fucked up than the inmates! Waylon knew because he'd lived among them for a little while. He hadn't exactly assimilated, but there was a sort of unspoken brotherhood.

Most of them really were mentally ill, but there were a handful like Waylon. People who'd said the wrong thing or rubbed someone the wrong way. Maybe they hadn't been crazy on admission, but they were _now_. Waylon wanted to think he wasn't like them, that he still sane, that he could still somehow get himself out of this situation he'd gotten himself into. He clung to that idea like it was a life raft.

He had no idea what Lisa and the boys had been told. No idea what was going on outside of the buzzing inside of his head, the awful images that kept shadowing his vision. Something had gotten out. Something downstairs. Waylon had been down there, and he knew what they did down there, and so his priority was to get as far away as possible.

Assuming he didn't get torn apart by... by whatever was tearing people apart. The hallways looked like they'd been tended to by the goriest set dresser in Hollywood. He'd spattered buckets full of human-chum all over the floors, the walls, the _ceilings_...

But it wasn't a set. It was a _place_, an asylum, and the human-chum was _actual people_. Crazy people, but Waylon was sure most of them were blameless.

Maybe not the guy chasing him right now, gibbering and clawing the air. Waylon was staying ahead of him, but only just, and he wasn't confident that he'd be able to fight the guy off. He had some kind of psychotic rage going for him, and all Waylon had was ass-clenching terror.

"Psst, over here!"

Waylon saw that there was a guy above him. Up in a vent. What the... fuck, that was a good idea! He was a little messed up looking, but Waylon didn't have time to judge. For all he knew, he was just as malformed as everyone else. He hadn't had time to really _take stock_. The guy sounded sane, and he was reaching out to Waylon, offering him a hand up.

Waylon took it, and tried to ignore his instinctual revulsion at how hot the guy's skin was. Once they were both crammed in the vent, the guy replaced the cover, and their pursuer started waving his arms and screaming incoherently. He knew they were up there, but didn't seem quite sure how to get himself up after them.

"Take it easy, buddy!" the other patient called down, "You're gonna attract some unwanted attention—"

He clammed up and grabbed at his head, and Waylon was doing the same. That awful _buzzing_ sound that he could feel in his _cells_. Like he was going to get shaken apart, shredded from the inside out. The screamer caught on, too, and moved on, his screams cutting off abruptly just after he'd moved out of sight. Waylon and his new friend didn't move or speak or even breathe, not for a long while, and then finally, his friend stirred.

"Can't just sit up here forever," he said, "Gonna cramp up. It's Rick, by the way. Rick Trager. M.D."

Waylon frowned. He knew that name. Everything immediately before the treatments was fuzzy, but he was sure he'd heard it before.

"Waylon Park," Waylon said.

"Park?" Trager laughed, "No shit? I figured they woulda killed you! Anywho, let's blow this popsicle stand, huh? You first, buddy. That thing's got a flashlight on it, right?"

He gestured to the camera Waylon was clutching.

"What? Oh, no, it doesn't. It has nightvision."

"Good enough. I'll be here in the rear with the gear."

Trager chuckled and Waylon shot him a look. _Weird dude_. He wasn't trying to murder him, though, so that was a bonus. And he seemed to have a plan that didn't involve 'run around screaming', so he at least had his wits about him. More or less. More than Waylon did.

"Where does this lead?"

"Male Ward," Trager said, "And from there we can get to admin, and hopefully not get shot by Murkoff Tactical!"

Waylon just crawled forward, pausing whenever he heard a loud scream or a crash. Everything was muffled and far away, the only clear sounds the buckling of the ducting and heavy, confined breathing. He would've kept crawling forever if Trager hadn't of put a hand on him. Right on his ass. Waylon figured it was dark and Trager hadn't meant to grope him, but his hand lingered just a _little_ too long.

"Hold up," Trager said, starting to fiddle with a vent cover, "We're here."

"The Male Ward?"

"Sure!" Trager said. Waylon didn't like his tone, and they hadn't been going for very long. And the room he dropped into looked like a big operating theatre. Waylon moved to follow him, but stopped himself, watching Trager instead, "Hoo_wee_! Jackpot!"

Trager was piling medical instruments on a wheeled cart. Tossing them on, even, and it was pretty clear he had no idea what half the stuff was.

"C'mon down, buddy," Trager said, "Help me out."

"What... what do you need all of that for?" Waylon asked. He was half in, half out of the ducts. Alarms were going off in his head. This guy was... this guy was probably not a guy he ought to hang out with.

"Always be prepared!" Trager said, "Who said that? Scar from the Lion King, right? Pretty sure it was him. I dunno. My nephews watched it every day for like a whole year. Little rascals!"

"Uh, sure," Waylon said. No way was this guy sane. No way. Scar did sing about being prepared, but... he definitely wasn't the source of that little tidbit of wisdom. His sons had been repeat-viewers of that particular Bluray. For some reason, it disturbed him to think that Trager was allowed near children.

"You're kinda making me uncomfortable, Waylon," Rick said, "Lurking up there like that. How am I gonna carry all this by myself?"

"I'm gonna... scout ahead, I think," Waylon said. He didn't want to be too up front about the fact that he was bailing out, but Trager was still pretty lucid. He looked at him and _grinned_. He knew. Waylon wasn't fooling him. Not at _all_.

"Sure, buddy," Rick said, "I get it. You're gonna regret not being in on the ground floor, but I'm sure I'll catch ya later. We can revisit this later. Thanks for the guided tour."

Rick had a scalpel in his hand, now, and Waylon swallowed.

"S... see you," Waylon said, feeling like a fool, "I... uh. Good luck."

"I make my own luck!" Trager said cheerfully. Waylon backed into the vent, replaced the cover, and didn't stop crawling for a very long time. Hopefully the Walrider would take care of that guy, because he did not envy _anyone_ who ran into him while he was fully equipped.

_**BizarroVeR of ffnet requested Waylon and Trager cross paths.**_


	15. Bad Investment

Chris Walker had become a _very_ expensive failure, but Blaire wasn't giving up just yet. Safe and sound in the control booth, he watched them lead the behemoth in. There were so many extra allowances and precautions in place to handle Chris, they'd had to train a team _specifically_ to deal with him. Blaire had been forwarded the expense report to date and it had made him wince, in no small part because he'd approved every single item on the list. The amount they spent on chemical restraint _alone_ was _quadruple_ what most patients used in a month. They'd had to custom-make physical restraints, since his body continued to grow in ways they didn't expect. His list of casualties had reached over a dozen, and the death benefits (or cover ups) were _exorbitant_. And top of everything? His caloric intake was _ridiculous_.

Blaire almost didn't recognize him when his entourage (a dozen people, all visibly sweating bullets) lead him in, and he loosened his tie a little when security started the long, arduous process of stripping off his physical restraints. He didn't envy the careful, nervous techs as they started to stick electrodes on him, prepping him for the pod. He'd been tan and tattooed when Blaire had snapped him up, convinced his military background would be a huge asset to the project. Now he looked like the skin under a recently picked-off scab, a raw pink that, he heard, felt like a _callous_. There was a scar on his forehead from when they'd still allowed him to have his hands free – he'd used his thick talons to scrape the skin off down to the bone. His limp was entirely gone, an increasingly terrifying side effect of his kidney's not flushing all the nanites they pumped him full of. They were test nanites, only meant to function for a few hours at the most, and they made subjects piss grey for about a day. Walker retained some, somehow kept them active. Not very many now, since he now vehemently resisted the conditioning, but enough for him to control. Enough that the wound on his forehead didn't to heal, but other minor abrasions did. Walsh had theorized that Walker could control the swarm if he _wanted_, but he refused to do so. Blaire had brushed him off. The whole point of this was to make sure the subjects couldn't refuse. Walker had been a hot fucking mess when Blaire had found him. There was no way he'd be able to get his shit together enough to fight against programs that broke every other patient down.

Even from the fishbowl, Blaire could see that his lips looked _chewed_ on. _Jesus_, the guy gave him the creeps. Out of everything, it was his _eyes_ that were the worst. They'd completely washed out, going from a dark brown to _white_. He wasn't blind, he was just...

Well, if he was honest with himself, Chris Walker was as close to a monster as a human could get. Plugging him into a pod was a huge ordeal that took up double the time, and that meant even _more_ money lost. From the fishbowl, it looked hilarious. How were they even going to fit him in today? Shit, even naked, Walker was terrifying. His body heaved with every breath. This was the nervy part: they couldn't put him into the pod in restraints, so they had to completely strip him down, hook up as much as they could _outside_ of it, and then cram him inside to finish up. All the while hoping the drugs keeping him placid held out.

Was he even going to fit? That was the big question of the day, at least until one of the techs jabbed him with an IV without warning him. In an instant, everything went straight to hell. The unlucky tech was lifted up by his throat, and Chris broke his neck with one hand before lobbing him into the pack of security like he was a crash test dummy. Dr. Walsh and the remaining tech scattered, and Walker nabbed the back of the surviving tech's collar, holding him up like a shield as security attempted to shoot him with tranq darts. He, too, was used as a projectile once his use as a shield had passed.

"Holy _shit_," Blaire said under his breath. He'd been defending his pet project for two years now, and he felt like he was watching it circle the drain in slow motion. Walsh pounded on the door to the fishbowl, howling at someone to let him in. No one moved.

Chris tore through the security like they were an _annoyance_, and when he'd finished, he picked out a few stray darts and brushed off the electrodes. He missed a few, and one of the monitors in the fishbowl reported that Chris's heart rate was still at rest. Alarms were blaring and security was having a fit over the radios. A few people had already run out of the fishbowl, screaming. One second the Morphogenic Engine Chamber was a sterile wonder of science, and the next, it was the set of a grindhouse horror film. Chris turned towards the fishbowl, and even though his eyes were a dead white, Blaire could see that Walker was looking _right_ at _him_.

Slow but deliberate, Chris stood next to the pod they'd intended to put him in and grabbed it. He spread his feet out and adjusted his grip a few times, and Blaire started to mutter, "_No, no, no_," under his breath. Those things cost _millions_ of dollars. Every part was custom made, and they were fidgety as hell to calibrate. Years of work, and Walker was tearing it up out of the floor like it was a box of packing peanuts.

Walker deadlifted the pod, his back arched as far back as it could go as he braced it against his chest and belly. Then, he started to sway.

"He's gonna throw it! _He's gonna throw it in here_!"

"Can the glass take it?"

"Fuck if I'm sticking around to find out!"

More people left. The first response security team arrived, but when they saw the bloody panorama in front of them, they didn't do much responding. A few of them dubiously adjusted their riot guns.

"Sir is... nonlethal doesn't really work on that guy, does it?"

"You can't kill him," Blaire said, his voice taking on a very high pitch that he couldn't stop, "Just bring him down. Just—_motherfucker_!"

Walker lobbed the pod at the glass. Maybe if he was a little bigger, and maybe if the pod was a little lighter, he might've broken through. The pod was destroyed on impact, and the glass buckled and fractured ominously, but it held.

And Walsh was in the fetal position by the door now, crying and rocking. Walsh, who had told him time and time again that Walker was probably playing possum. That the physical restraints, even the _chemical_ ones didn't restrain him as much as he pretended they did. Blaire had laughed him off. Walker was a stupid fucker who beat his girlfriend half to death and then killed his own kid. He didn't have the mental fortitude to play a long game.

But there he was, a terrifying mountain of calloused flesh, striding for the door and reaching for Walsh. Some of the security men moved forward, but Blaire held up a hand.

"Don't open that fucking door you _lunatics_," Blaire said, "Can we... can we flood that room with gas or something? Tell me we have that fucking feature installed!"

"Sir! Dr. Walsh-!"

"He's already dead."

Walker picked Walsh up by the back of his neck like he was a naughty kitten, and then proceeded to beat the man against the fractured pane of the fishbowl. Walsh wasn't heavy enough to make a dent, but Blaire still flinched at every impact. It was worse, he decided, when Walsh stopped screaming. Once Walsh was dead, Walker ripped his head off and started to smear blood on his hands, and then the window. He was writing something. Walsh was his palette, and the window was his canvas.

"We need to evacuate this room," another tech had arrived, and he was working three consoles by himself, darting between them like a man possessed, "If we're going to flood that chamber with gas, the window might not act as a complete seal. Once I activate it..."

"Do it," Blaire said, "Everyone out."

Blaire didn't move. He couldn't. He was watching Walker fingerpaint on the window with intensely morbid fascination. _B_, _L_ and _A_ so far. He already knew what he was writing. This corpulent fuck had his number from the start. The security team was donning gas masks, and someone shoved one into Blaire's hands. He put it on, watching Chris finish his work of art. When he'd written _BLAIRE_ in full, he pushed his lumpy mug right up to the glass and put a hand over his nose and mouth, almost like he was doing a breath check. Blaire couldn't help but lock eyes with him, and Walker held his gaze as he started to dig his talons into his own face, scratching the skin away like it was only stubborn adhesive from a shoddy price sticker.

The heart monitor continued to report that Chris Walker's heartbeat was at rest. His talons flexed as he scraped skin and cartilage and muscle away, and then he flung the flesh away like it was trash. Walker's grotesque new maw yawned open and his breath fogged up the glass.

"Chamber sealed! We're pumping it full of gas now!"

Walker backed away a step and clasped his hands together, thick knuckles interlocking, and then he swung the club of meat and bone at the glass. It shuddered. It fractured more. He did it again, and _again_, and every pound seemed like it would be the one to finally destroy the supposedly impenetrable glass. It had been custom made for this room. Blaire didn't even know how much it cost. How much filling a room that big with knock-out gas would cost. How much it would cost to pay out Walsh's death benefit.

Chris succumbed to the gas before he could break through, but he'd already done more damage than Blaire could hope to cover up. He was completely expunged for the program and would return to solitary confinement, his restraints tripled and his escape protocol switched from non-lethal to kill-on-sight. They'd sunk too much capital into him to execute him right then and there, but not enough that they wouldn't kill him to stop a repeat performance.

Jeremy was standing in front of the board twelve hours later. Usually he _sat_ on the board. Usually he looked put together, sleek as a shark and twice as deadly, but today he was rumpled, wearing the suit he'd worn yesterday. There were dark circles under his eyes and he hadn't shaved. He could still see Walker pulling his own face off like it was silly putty. He could still hear Walsh's _screams_. He could hear the ominous crackling of the fishbowl's window as more and more fractures reduced its integrity.

They were replaying the footage of the _incident_, but Jeremy couldn't watch it. His eyes were on two vacant chairs at the table. One was his – today he was standing, being reprimanded like a child – and the other had been Rick's. Rick hadn't even gotten a talking to like this. Jeremy had seen to that. Forwarded the board the increasingly unstable emails, the footage of him laughing as a seven year old was killed. Told them about his plans to start up a pit fighting ring with the tougher patients. Implied that he'd start bringing children in to experiment on. Rick hadn't stood a chance.

"This footage is damning, Blaire," someone said, turning to him, "Your reports suggested that Walker was one to watch, and yet all these notations from Dr. Walsh that you _concealed from us_ suggested the _opposite_. In his last email, before Walker did _tens_ of _millions_ in damage to a _top secret facility_, Walsh even predicted that this would happen."

"Sir, I thought—"

"Are you a medical doctor, Blaire?"

"No, sir."

"So what made you think you didn't need the opinion of one?"

Blaire pressed his lips into a thin, bloodless line. He couldn't really answer that. His pride had gotten him to this point, and now his pride was being collectively shit on. He had been wrong about Walker. Probably wrong about him from the very start. And Walsh... he'd blown the guy off. Wernicke he might've listened to, but Walsh? Walsh was a bleeding heart. People who cared about patients didn't understand how important the bottom line was. They just got in the way.

"It's the decision of this board, Blaire, that you be removed from your seat," someone said. Blaire didn't care who. He kept staring at Rick's empty seat, "You'll be overseeing a complete rehaul of our security protocols. And we'll be needing to bring in some contractors who can beef up the Engine's code. We can't have another incident like this happen again, Blaire. This is your first and last warning. Your salary will reflect this decision the next pay cycle. Understood?"

"Understood."

**_Inspired by (and with the blessing of!) thekhanumsjar of tumblr._**


	16. Faith

Father Martin called them his seraphs, his guardian angels. He told them that they had wings with bloody feathers, and that no matter where they went, he could follow the blood-trails their wings left, and he would find them. Unfortunately, the reverse was not true. They were not with him always, and he had proven himself... capable of survival. The deeper into his visions he delved, however, the more disconnected he became. He was convinced that the Walrider had come to purify the world of madness, and he could only truly join with god if he himself was purified.

They did not argue with him. Theirs was not to argue. Theirs was to protect. And did they sometimes stray? Of course. They were only men, after all. Men of the blood, of the mountains. But they always returned to the fold, resolve renewed.

Martin had slipped away, and they feared the worst when they discovered where Martin's trail of scrawled blood and new supplicants led.

"The Vocational Block."

"The Groom."

"What would draw him to such a cause?"

"The reason is hardly a concern."

"You are right."

"We must retrieve him."

"At once."

There was no question that Martin be returned to his work. They had considered, briefly, taking up the mantle themselves, but no. That was not their part in it. It was hubris to even think it. They were the last men of the blood, and if they did not see dawn, their blood would not do much more than nourish the stony earth. And they were meant for so much more.

The Groom's lair was as they expected. Here was another man buried too deeply in his delusions. He was not attuned to their cause as Father Martin was, and so they'd left him be. It was wasteful, what the Groom did, but they would not be the ones to reason with him. Father Martin had no such qualms. It was too quiet for their tastes, but it was dark, and that suited them well. They slipped in and out of the shadows, sometimes pausing to ponder the Groom's work. They did not speak. They had not needed to speak even before the asylum. Though they had always known each other's mind well, here in the shadow of the mountain they were very nearly one in the same. _Nearly_. They were brothers, after all. Sometimes they had disagreements.

They heard the singing at the same time, and they headed towards it, fanning out, flanking the source. There was dread in their bellies. Had the Groom already done his work? Was their Prophet another mockery of a bride? It seemed cruel that they might fail him so soon before he could finish guiding the Apostle. They were not strangers to cruelty, but it did not mean they were immune to it.

Another voice. Father Martin. Singing with the Groom. They were humming, though the song was not one either brother knew. And then they saw, and though they did not need to, they exchanged glances. Seeing was believing, but they were both incredulous.

Father Martin was helping the Groom sew a dress. The Groom was seated in a chair, perhaps to accommodate his long limbs, while Martin sat on the floor, tidying up the hem with his busy, nimble fingers. He worked faster than even the Groom, his work meticulous and neat, and the Groom spent more time watching Father Martin stitch than he did doing his own work.

"You'll be so proud, father," the Groom said, "So proud when you hold your grandchildren."

Another glance. The Groom's father was a dark and terrible man. Had he projected something kinder onto Father Martin? Something more befitting his bloodless, sterile fantasy? Father Martin beamed at him.

"I will be," Martin said. There was not a trace of irony, and they began to worry. Father Martin was... easy to influence. It was why he was the Prophet. It was why he guided the Apostle. Had he been drawn into the Groom's fantasy so easily? "Oh, I've always wanted to hold a grandchild. My son abandoned me. Not like you, Eddie. You're a good son."

How to proceed? Disrupting them might shred whatever threads were keeping the Groom civil. But he might turn on Father Martin anyway, unable to accept a father figure, even one as gentle as Father Martin. Oh, he was a killer. He spilled blood. Martin's soul was still an innocent one, pure, as the souls of the mad often were. Father Martin did not kill out of malice or spite. He killed only for the great cause. Such acts were not sins in the shadow of the mountain: they were holy.

"Why would he do such a thing?" the Groom was appalled, though he put too much weight in his words. They rang hollow and insincere, lines from a play he had written himself. Martin did not notice.

"He was ashamed," Martin said. He did not sound like himself, and the serenity that inhabited his face was stripped away, if only for a moment. Martin was a sad old man, tucked away where his family couldn't see or hear him. Such lucid words did not sit well with the Groom, and the leather of his gloves creaked as he gripped the fabric of the dress.

"What did you _do_?" the Groom asked. His tone was dangerous – the Groom was already imagining what a father could do to shame a son. The Groom's imagination on such a subject was without compare.

Oblivious to his danger, Father Martin closed his eyes, drawing the hem of the dress up to his chest for a moment, "I don't remember. I suppose that's why."

He had spoken out of turn. How he'd managed to avoid doing so for so long would remain a mystery, there was little doubt of that, but his period of grace had passed. The Groom rose from his chair, his hands clenched into tight fists. Father Martin blinked his eyes open and looked up at him, his serenity tainted with sadness over something he could not recall. Sorrow for something lost, something that had drifted away, in sight but no longer distinguishable. A voice shouting from too far away to hear clearly.

"How could you forget? How could you forget what you _did_?" the Groom raged. He grabbed the front of Father Martin's jacket and lifted him off his feet.

"I wish I knew," Father Martin said. Tears were streaming down his cheeks as he mourned his unknown loss, "Oh, I wish I knew, son."

Now. While he was distracted. Before he could get his knife. They slipped from the shadows. A hand fisted into the Groom's hair and a knife slid into his back. Not enough to kill, no, there was nothing to take from a madman. They did not kill for the sake of killing. Two more hands intervened, snatching Martin away when the Groom released him in surprise. He curled up like a babe, crying softly, and allowed himself to be spirited away.

The Groom turned, and his violence was a terrible thing. He flung the brother away and then lunged for his knife, brandishing it and grinding his teeth.

"How _dare_ you!?"

The brother kept his distance. He and his brother, their power was their cunning. The Groom, his was his madness, his deep well of rage made manifest by the Machine. This was not a fight he could win. Not alone. Perhaps not even joined by his brother.

"Look at you," the Groom sneered, pressing in on the brother, driving him back, "Naked as the day you were born. You're nothing but a vulgar whore, parading yourself around for the whole world to see."

The brother said nothing. Words would only incite him further. He felt fear. It was not pleasant, not the delicious fear of the unknown, of anticipation. There was no mystery here. The Groom would mutilate him. He would spill his blood and let it rot. He would waste every bit of him and gain nothing but a brief rush, a tease of the relief he sought and would never have. It was not a good death. It was not a death he wanted. The Groom's knife sliced the air between them and the brother bided his time, waited for the right swing, and he darted past the Groom, shiving him on the side his brother had not slipped his own knife into on his way past.

Such wounds only enraged the Groom. He shouted and gave chase. The Groom was relentless, but so was the brother. The song of the mountain sang in his blood, and it sang to him that now was not yet time.

The Groom's legs were longer, his rage greater, but he was used to grabbing for clothes. Twice, he grasped where a collar might be, his fingernails raking along an arm and then a neck, finding no purchase. The third time he lunged and hugged him around his chest, lifting him off his feet and then slamming him into a wall. He dropped his knife, and the Groom had forgotten his. The Groom grabbed a fistful of hair and slammed his head into the wall, letting him collapse to the ground after. Throughout, the song of the mountain never wavered. Did it mock him?

"_Disgusting_," the Groom sneered, kicking him in the ribs, "You'll _never_ be beautiful."

Blows rained down on him, and his attempts to fight back were for nothing. Too strong. He was too strong. The Groom put a heavy boot to his neck, and their eyes met. Still the mountain sang, a loud clang and a crunch – no. That was not the mountain. That was another song, and one he was well acquainted with.

The Groom staggered down to one knee, and the sound of metal cracking into bone reigned. His brother beat the Groom until he could no longer move and then he tossed the pipe away, falling to his knees and gathering his brother too him, his hands shaking as he probed all the bruises and cuts. The beating had been severe, but he would recover. It looked worse than it was.

"We mustn't allow Father Martin to stray again."

"It would... be for the best."

"Please, brother. Do not speak."

"We should be away from this place."

"Can you stand?"

"I must."

It was slow going, and by the time he was on his feet, the Groom's fingers were already twitching. He envied how quickly the Groom was able to come around. They themselves had been deemed unsuitable for the program early on, and though they retained more of themselves than any other inmate, the Machine had not made them quite so durable as some others. The Groom, at least, was reluctant to leave his home. Once they were free of his lair, they took a moment to rest. Father Martin had been set back on the path, and he would be safe enough.

"I feared I would lose you."

Their eyes met, and he drew his fearful brother's face down to his. The kiss was brief and tasted of blood.

"Never, brother."

"Hush, now. Rest. Recover. Our work is not yet done."

Strong fingers smoothed through his hair and he closed his eyes. It was slow work, knitting bone and mending muscle, but with his brother to watch over him, he knew he would be right again soon. The mountain had not stopped singing. The mountain had never lost faith.

Now, neither would they.


	17. Hostage Negotiation

"Well _hey there_, fellahs!" Rick called down from the top of the ruined staircase, "You got an appointment? Because lemme tell yah, I am just_swamped_ today. Maybe get in touch with reception, see if they can't squeeze you in next week."

Two stark naked men were staring up at him, both of them armed. They appeared, so far, unimpressed by his banter, which was a bad sign. Either they were too nuts to appreciate how funny he was, or they were saner than they looked. Rick didn't have anything against folks who didn't feel like wearing pants – it was almost a religious experience – but there was a pretty strong Deliverance vibe oozing out of their ill-shaped skulls.

"Tough crowd," Rick said.

"Where is Father Martin?"

"More to the point: return him to us."

"Ohh!" Rick made jazz hands at the two of them, "I don't think you're in any position to make demands, Tweedledick and Tweedledong."

Not even a twitch. Were they high, maybe? Rick thought he'd rounded up most of the good stuff, but it wasn't like he'd been that thorough. Their lack of response was more than a little discouraging.

"Why would you want that old windbag back?" Rick asked, "I mean he has been talkin' my ear off non_stop_ since he came in. Pretty sure I'm gonna have to operate. He's got a serious case of Assholitis. Might be terminal. Highly contagious."

"Return him."

"Unharmed."

"Not really seein' how I come out ahead on this, boys," Rick said, "I mean, I give him back, and _then_ what? I _don't_ get to pull out his teeth and ask him where his god is? Because I gotta tell yah, that talk gets old _real_ quick."

"You've harmed him already."

It was a statement, but it was also a question. Rick wasn't enjoying these guys at all. And where was Chris when he needed him? Seemed like that fat fuck always tromping around and picking people off who got cornered around here.

"Nah, I... _heeeeeey_. Hey!" Rick snapped his fingers and crouched, pointing at the two of them, "I _know_ you guys! You're those cannibal hicks who ate their mom and called the police on yourselves! What the _fuck_! We figured you two'd be Morphogenic Engine _superstars_!"

"We have a different calling."

"Give us Father Martin."

"What're you gonna give _me_?" Rick asked.

"Where is he?"

"I told him god was in the men's room and then I locked 'im in there," Rick said, "You want him back? You're gonna have to _trade_."

"We could simply take him."

His brother nodded.

"And how do you figure you're gonna get up here?" Rick asked, "I've got it all locked down, _muchachos_. You're in _my_ house, now."

They were silent for awhile. A long while. Longer than Rick would've liked. Maybe if they had at least talked quietly among themselves, it'd be less creepy, but neither man took his eyes off of Rick. Honestly? It was starting to bother him. A lot.

"You guys know what trade is, right? Bartering? You give me something, I give you something of equal or less-"

"We are aware."

"Patronizing."

"_Rude_."

"I do not like him."

"Nor I."

"Look, I'm not just gonna give him back because you asked," Rick said, trying not to get spooked. He had the upper hand, here. There was nothing to be afraid of, "It's kinda a pain in the ass to get folks up here. You want him back? You gotta replace him."

"We require him unharmed."

"Unmolested."

"Ho ho _ho_! Coverin' _all_ the bases!" Rick laughed, a nervous sound despite his attempt to sound smug. These hillbillies were really starting to psych him out, "Fine. I'll keep him locked up so he can't hurt himself. And I... _probably_ won't do anything to him. Maybe. He's _real_ annoying. I was kinda savin' him for something _special_."

"As are we."

"A conflict of interest."

"Perhaps we need a mediator."

"It would be terrible if things were to escalate."

"Whoa, escalate?" Rick put his hands up like they'd pulled a gun on him. He had the high ground, and as far as he knew, he had the only key to this floor. They were bluffing. There was no way they could get up here. Probably. _Shit_, what if he'd missed a staircase, or some hole in the floor? Maybe they could get into the vents. They had broad shoulders – it'd be a tight squeeze – but it wasn't impossible, "Come on now, boys! We can be civil about this!"

"We're civil."

"_Very_."

"Our civility is beyond compare."

"Oh, yes."

"Are... are you fuckin' with me?" Rick said. Their expressions hadn't changed once, not fucking _once_, since he'd started talking to them. What was he even negotiating for? Was it worth it? There were tons of crazies around. Sure, it was a pain to nab them, but most of them didn't have followers. Most of them _were_ followers, "I don't think it's too much to ask—"

"More than fair."

"Quid pro quo."

"Oh, fuck off with that Hannibal Lecter shit," Rick snapped, "I'm not scared of you."

They both blinked owlishly at him, and then at each other. The bald one shrugged.

"Right, it's just a _coincidence_ that two cannibals—you know what? Fine," Rick just wanted them to go away, "Fine, you can have him. But I want you to know I don't endorse this kind of religious bullshit."

"Oh, _no_."

"We don't have the doctor's endorsement."

"Our entire cause, up in smoke."

"Do you want your schizo back or _not_, assholes?"

The two men smiled at him, and it was probably the worst thing that had happened to Rick. The worst thing in his entire fucking life. He turned and left, walking fast to the men's room, but he slowed when he realized what he was doing. This was... this was stupid. How were two hillbillies with literally nothing on him doing this? Maybe it was their foreskins. That was kinda intimidating, right? Didn't see a lot of those in the ol' U S of A. Rick stopped just outside the men's room and tilted his head. Martin was praying, beseeching god to reveal himself, and Rick scowled. This stupid fucking guy. He was getting the natives restless. Maybe if he just tossed down his corpse, they'd give up and go away?

Or they'd find a way up and kill him. It didn't look like they had better things to do. They weren't gainfully employed like Rick was. Fuck it. He could find other guys. He unlocked the door and stepped inside, and Martin didn't even notice him, rocking back and forth on his knees and supplicating a urinal. Fucking god-botherers. He could go bother someone else!

"C'mon, buddy," Rick grabbed his arm, none too gently, and pulled him to his feet, "The church van is here to take you to mass."

"Oh, but—" Martin looked troubled as Rick dragged him out of the bathroom, "The Walrider. He hasn't revealed himself yet!"

"Ain't my problem, guy," Rick said.

"But my son, you said—"

"Don't you worry," Rick cut him off, bringing him to the collapsed staircase, "I'm sure your pals will... _huh_."

They weren't there. Rick frowned and squinted into the darkness, but there was no trace of them. Had he... had he imagined them? No way, that was bullshit. They were real guys. He'd seen them before, and he'd seen them just now. Rick had his shit together, unlike Father Nutcase. There was no way he'd had an imaginary conversation. There was no way his imaginary conversation had intimidated him into turning over someone he'd very much wanted to kill.

"Father Martin."

"We were concerned."

Rick whipped around, and there they were. They were taller on even footing. And their weapons looked a whole lot sharper. Rick quickly let go of Martin and backed up a step, his hands in the air, up over his head. Any further back and he'd fall down a floor. And probably wouldn't be able to get back up.

"My seraphs!" Martin cooed, "You needn't have worried. I was only praying. The Walrider is testing me. Testing my faith."

The bald one put a hand on Martin's back, guiding him away, and the one with hair lingered a moment, staring Trager down. Rick swallowed, and it was more audible than he would've liked. How the fuck had they gotten up here!? That was... he hadn't even been gone that long! What the fuck kind of voodoo bullshit _was_ this!?

"We will all be tested before dawn."

"Some of us more than others."

And with that creepy fucking exchange, they left him there. Rick knew he should've followed, but he didn't move, his back pressed against the wall and his heart trying to escape his chest. Not a whole lot had been able to scare Rick for awhile now, but that? That shit he could do _without_. The Walrider had become some kind of creepy memetic religion long before things had started going to hell, but now it was a full blown _cult_. Fuck it. Rick wanted nothing to do with it, and he didn't want to know what they were up to, or why, or how they'd gotten up. Standing where he was, he could hear what sounded like some kind of uproar. Fresh meat being flushed towards him, maybe? He could use a distraction.

_**BizarroVeR wanted to see how Father Martin held up against Trager. thedramaticmurderer of tumblr wanted to see how Trager fared against the Twins.**_


	18. Oblivion

Miles _was_. Miles _had been_. Or was he still...? It was complex, whatever his state of being. There had been pain, but it had been _flesh_pain. Fleshpain was nothing, it was only meat, and he had transcended such things. He was no longer a slave to blood and bone. Now? Now he was a master of it. He could look at a thing and know it _entirely_. It was startlingly reductive, to _know_ a thing. _Any_thing. To realize that it was only _that_ and nothing more, only meat, only a cage for a malevolence that would run riot if not checked by mortality.

These new thoughts were terrifying, but at the same time, they were not _new_ thoughts. They were thoughts that swirled in the darkness between the stars. They were thoughts that stirred beneath the crushing weight of a mountain. And they were _liberating_. Such knowledge would break a man, but Miles was a man no longer.

_Walrider_, they called him. It was only a word, but words held power. He did not know himself as Walrider, but did he know himself as Miles? Did either apply? Neither? Both? Such thoughts felt extraneous, pointless, but they were not so easily shaken off. He was aware that he was something new. He had Become, and not even the black heart of the mountain had been certain of the result. It was a tangle of consciousness, and Miles was unsure how he had not become overwhelmed by an intelligence beyond his own. And if _he_ was unsure, was _it_? Was it folly to attempt to segregate their thoughts?

They were one and the same, now. A new mind in a new form.

Shredding the newly arrived Murkoff Tactical team had been cathartic. The patients he left alone. When he'd seen one scrambling for the door, he'd felt a powerful surge of... what? Rage? This man was doing what he had tried to do. He'd considered tearing him apart, but the rage was outside of himself, and he was able to examine it. All the Murkoff people wanted to do was keep this quiet. If word got out about this, it would make everything else, all their other interests and holdings and facilities, crumble.

So he let him go. Gave him a little help, a little push. There was an unhappy pang in a heart he no longer had when the man took his Jeep. He'd gone _everywhere_ in that Jeep. Before he'd left for Murkoff, his boyfriend had run out of the apartment, still in his boxers, and made him roll down the window so he could kiss him one last time. Akram. He'd been worried about Miles taking the assignment. He didn't like how obsessed Miles had become with bringing the company down. He had begged him to think it over another week, but Miles had insisted. That had only been twenty-four hours ago. Not even that long – it was barely noon. Would anyone call Akram? Would Murkoff track him down and try to extort him? Kill him out of spite? Miles tried to be upset about it, but he found that for the same reason he couldn't be enraged, he couldn't be upset, either. Akram was just meat. Just blood. He was the same as everything else. Lesser. Beneath him, now.

He loved Akram but love was so far away from him. Not beneath him, though. _Beyond_ him.

Once he was certain his Jeep made it out of the asylum, he was drawn back to the front drive. There were two men waiting for him. He _knew_ them, and they _knew_ him. They were not quite like anyone else, he saw. All others were mere meat, fleshservants of their soft minds. And they were that, yes, but _more_. Their blood ran dark, and they were more than flesh. Their transcendence seemed to flow off of them like tattered black banners, like _wings_.

_You tried to kill me_, Miles did not need to speak to them. Not with words. They understood perfectly.

_We are only men_, they said. They were two beings, but they had been born as one. Their minds flowed together, two ocean currents colliding and swirling together. It was beautiful, Miles thought, to have such a perfect understanding. He thought he'd had that with Akram. Could he trust that thought, that residual feeling? Or had it been a trick, a distraction? There were more important things. He didn't have time to dwell on it.

_You are more than men_, Miles accused, turning his attention back to the men of the blood. They cast their eyes down in shame and supplication, and Miles could not bring himself to punish them. They were more than men, yes, but at their core, still men. Their hearts beat and their blood pumped and their minds sometimes refused the truth of their fleshy prison. They _felt_. Love was not beyond them. Miles was jealous.

_You have Become_, they said, _We would serve you._

You'd serve me at a dinner party,

the sarcasm, the _snark_, it overcame the sudden gravity of the situation. It threw the men off, and they exchanged glances. It made them uncomfortable, that he was still capable of such a thing. Good. They had terrorized him. He harboured no real malice for them, not anymore, but it amused him to see them uncomfortable, _I know it's almost time. I slept for a long time, and the stars have drifted since then. The stars will be right, soon.  
_  
He didn't sound like himself. Or he sounded like his new self. Miles felt a powerful rush of dysphoria then, so strong that he felt himself fly apart, unable to keep his mass solid. The men covered their ears and huddled against each other, and Miles wondered if the song (static to those not of the blood, who had not Become) was discordant now. It was as though he had stormed onstage and shoved a brilliant performer off their piano bench just so he could clumsily pound the keys with his fists. And when he did try to play, it was chopsticks, clumsy and uncoordinated.

Sometimes the performer got up again and carefully joined him, turning the clumsy notes into something beautiful again, but Miles kept shoving them away. Miles didn't care how beautiful the song was. The beauty was a deception, a lovely wrapping for a looming devastation.

He wasn't Miles. Not anymore. He could never see Akram again, because Akram would not _know_ him. Akram might _think_ he knew, but he'd be wrong. So terribly wrong. Miles couldn't do that to him, couldn't suffer through it himself. _His self_. He did not want his essential self to be lost in the swirl of nanites and a primordial sentience from beyond the stars. Some things were more important, yes, and hadn't that been who Miles was at his core? Wasn't that why he hadn't gone mad? Why he hadn't flown apart already, shredded from the inside out by something beyond his ability to understand?

He had pursued this very story because it was more important than he was. And now he had Become.

_I have some things I need to do_, Miles said, _Destroy all the records. Burn it down, for all I care_.

_And then?_

_They'll come again_, Miles said, _Surrender. Let them take you to their new facility. It's... I can't see it. Go there, and I'll find you. Wake the Dreamers._

_The Blind Dreamers_, they said, reverent, _We will not fail you_.

Miles didn't even know how he knew about the Dreamers, but he did. He had been speaking to them for quite some time, but they had been taken away from the shadow of the mountain. They were not of the blood, not like his servants, and so his whispers could not reach them. He would have to go to them, to finish the work. And time was such a small thing, now. Only a blink of an eye before the stars were right, and the darkness between the stars swallowed everything up.

The dysphoria washed over him again, and it made the brothers flinch. Miles intensely disliked most of his new thoughts, and in no small part because there was nothing _new_ about them. They were ancient, and they preceded every sentient being on Earth. They were cold and pitiless. Was he so readily a pawn? Would he play his part in a play written by things that had no need for written language? Things that could not even be _classified_ as _things_. Things that defied all understanding.

But did this _thing_ he was, this _thing_ he had Become... did _it_ understand _him_? That thought rattled something inside of him and Miles felt a rush of vindictive satisfaction. He had been so overwhelmed by his new state that he had overlooked a very simple thing: something that had been sleeping since before men had walked upright had no real understanding of men, no working knowledge of their minds. He was just as unknowable. Just as alien and terrifying.

Miles knew what he had to do, then. This place still needed to burn. The Dreamers still needed to wake. But the lights would _not_ go out when the stars were right.

The song was his, now. He was changing the lyrics. The brothers were cowering before him now, on their knees, their hands pressed uselessly over their ears. It was not a song they could ignore. Not as men of the blood. They were _his_ now, and they would come to love the new song. It happened to Miles all the time. At first he'd hate whatever new garbage they were pouring into people's ears over the radio, but before he knew it, he was singing it to himself in the shower.

Off-key, to make Akram laugh and roll his eyes.

Same concept, but with an impactful difference: Miles's song would not herald a great darkness. His song would push it _away_. His song would pierce the darkness. _Shatter it_.

The silence that followed would be terrible. It might destroy him. Far in the distance, something rumbled. Some great mass crushed beneath the weight of the mountains shivered. It had been dying for eons, and it would continue to die, but it was not a thing that feared death. Not death.

What it feared was _oblivion_.


	19. Three Sugars

Rick had always been a morning person. No matter what he'd been doing the night before, no matter how little sleep he got, once the sun rose, he was up and at 'em and ready to go. The night before had been a late one, but there he was, brewing coffee and humming. Rick was a pretty positive guy, all things considered. A silver lining kind of guy. Things had been rough for him growing up, but lately? It was all paying off. Everything was coming up _Ricky_.

His... _aggressive_ management style coupled with his natural affinity for numbers, his charisma, and his complete lack of moral character had landed him the highest paying job of his life. The Murkoff Corporation was a heckuva step up from a Wallstreet firm, not only in terms of cold hard cash, but in terms of how little he had to give a shit about his underlings. He could literally throw them into a hole if they pissed him off enough. Rick hadn't yet found a limit to what he could get away with.

Maybe the best perk of the job, though, was having people suck up to him. They knew he was the numbers guy, and that he had a whole crapload of influence over the board, and he got to do pretty much whatever he liked. Like get blown by junior executives in the board room in exchange for a totally unearned promotion. Well, _nah_, he'd _earned_ it. Just not via the usual channels. And as a bonus, he hadn't been weird afterwards. They'd actually wound up becoming... whatever their version of friends with benefits was. It was complicated, but they didn't talk about it.

The past month, Jer had even started spending the night at his place. They still staggered their arrival at work, but Rick didn't think anyone was fooled. They golfed together, they constantly joked over email. They even coordinated their employee hazing.

Rick poured coffee into two mugs (both with the word _COFFEE_ printed on the side – an inside joke that had been worth every penny) and mixed three sugars into Jer's. His, he left black. The three sugars pretty much summed Jer up, he thought. No milk, so people thought he was drinking straight black coffee, but enough sugar to render the taste of the coffee undetectable. Rick had a huge soft spot for the guy, but he was a complete baby. He was always writing checks with his mouth that his ass couldn't cash, and he was allergic to the word 'work'. But he was a wild ride in the sack, and he was one of the only people Rick had ever worked with that hadn't been put off or even a little frightened of Rick's lack of ethics. Not only was he not disturbed, he thought it was _hilarious_.

A mug in each hand (Jer's in his right), Rick headed back into the bedroom. Usually he had to nudge the lazy shit a few times before he'd wake up, so Rick was surprised to see him sitting up, frowning at his phone.

"You're up early, buddy," Rick said. Jer started, and guilt flashed over his face. He hastily locked his phone, "What's the occasion?"

"Got a message from work," Jer said, setting his phone on the nightstand. Remnants of their late night littered it: a mirror faintly dusted with white, a hundred dollar bill that had unravelled but still retained a tube shape, some torn up condom wrappers. The usual, "They want us to come in."

"Nah," Rick said, offering Jer his coffee before he sat on the edge of the bed. Jer accepted it and took an experimental sip. One time Rick had poured a ton of salt in it. It was important to keep people on their toes. When he found it was sweet instead of salty or bitter, he took a big swallow.

"It's important."

"Let's play hooky," Rick waggled his eyebrows, "Hooky n'nookie."

"...did you just use _nookie_ in a sentence unironically?" Jer was briefly jarred out of whatever weird moody funk he was in, a sardonic smile twitching onto his face, "You fucking dinosaur."

Rick grinned and leaned in, and Jer started to tilt his head to the side. The second lips grazed his neck, he leaned away and shook his head. Rick frowned at him. Since when did Jeremy not want to skip work?

"We really need to go in," Jer said, "It's important."

"What is?"

"The emergency meeting."

"I didn't get a message about—"

Rick's phone buzzed on the nightstand, jittering sideways as it vibrated. Jer raised his eyebrows and gestured to his phone, and sure enough, there was an emergency meeting. Rick still didn't see the urgency, though. He didn't deal with emergencies. And if there had been some kind of stock crash or financial crisis? He would've gotten calls long before it had happened – _calls_, not _texts_. Whatever this 'emergency' was, it was likely total bullshit, like some legal shitstorm he'd just have to pour some money on until it went away. When you were using mentally ill people as guinea pigs, sometimes folks got upset. The more zeros that got waved in their face, though, the less they could justify being upset. Everyone liked to pretend they had strong moral fibre, but Rick knew better.

"We should get going," Jer was slugging his coffee, and Rick grimaced at him. How could he drink something that sweet so fast? "Don't wanna be late."

"What the fuck is going on, Jer?" Rick frowned at him and adjusted his glasses, "You're actin' all squirrely. Who the fuck cares about some emergency meeting? If it was a real emergency they'd at least send a _reason_."

"I dunno," Jeremy slid out of bed (the other side, so he didn't have to move past Rick) and grabbed his boxers from last night, "Maybe it's top secret."

"The whole fucking _place_ is top secret, Jer," Rick didn't move, sipping his coffee and watching Jer jitter around, putting on his clothes from last night. Since when did he wear shit from last night? "You got like five clean suits here, Jer. What's your rush?"

"Jesus Christ, Ricky," Jer snapped at him, "Take your job seriously for fucking once!"

Rick blinked owlishly at him. Something was up. Something that involved him. Something Jer was involved in, too. He felt something sharp stab him in the guts, but he ignored it. Whatever, they were just fuck buddies. He didn't care. He did lose his taste for his coffee, however, and set it on top of the coke-dusted mirror.

"What did you do?"

Jer froze in the midst of retying his tie, like a deer in headlights. _Busted_. This weasely little shit – he should've known better. _Goddammit_. Way to think with your dick, Ricky. How long had he been working him over?

"What?" he said after too long of a pause, "What do you... I didn't do anything!"

"You're a shitty liar, Jer."

"I'm not... look, we have to go in," Jeremy said. He grabbed his cufflinks from the nightstand, although Rick didn't know why. His suit was rumpled. It looked like he'd slept in it. Cufflinks weren't going to zazz things up, "All right?"

"What's gonna happen?" Rick asked. His voice had lost all of its warmth, and it gave him _great_ satisfaction to see that it was making Jer nervous, "Didja have daddy falsify some records for you? Getting me fired so you can take on my shares? Nothing is ever _enough_ for you, is it?"

"Ricky-"

"Don't you fucking Ricky _me_, Jer," Rick hissed, "_What the fuck did you do?_"

"I forwarded a bunch of your emails to the board," he said, "It's a disciplinary hearing."

"Why the fuck would you do that?" Rick said. Most of their email exchanges were just attempts to one-up each other in terms of awful ideas. Nothing serious. Well. Usually. Nobody had complained yet, so long as the money kept rolling in.

"Some of the board caught wind of that stunt you pulled with Walker—"

"Is this you getting back at me for messing with your pet project?" Rick stood finally, angrily yanking his hair back into a ponytail, "You weren't doing _shit_ with it, Jer. I was trying to _help_ you."

"I didn't need your help!" Jeremy snapped, "And he killed a kid! It was fucked up!"

"Oh, you suddenly give a shit about kids?" Rick laughed. It was a sound as bitter as his coffee, "Give me a fucking break, Jer. I'm not some rube you can placate with your bullshit. _I know you_."

"You don't know shit about me," Jer protested. It was a weak one, and he couldn't look Rick in the eye.

"Get the fuck out," Rick said. He didn't like how his voice shook a little, but he didn't think Jer noticed. He'd never been that observant, "Get the fuck outta here you twinky fucking _Judas_."

Jeremy didn't argue, and that's when Rick knew he was probably fired. After he slunk out with his tail between his legs, Rick spent a good twenty minutes in deep, contemplative silence. He had enough money that he never had to work again. He was forty eight, and he'd been stupid to engage in an even _semi_-serious relationship with someone that was so much like him but so much _younger_. It would be shitty, but he could survive this. Even if they didn't let him sell back his shares, which he was counting on, he had plenty of cash on hand to stay comfortable.

He would definitely never work again. Not after this. They'd make sure of that.

Rick dressed for success. Not a hair was out of place, his suit was crisp, even his shoes were polished to the point of being mirrors. Before he left, he threw out the half-dozen mugs in his kitchen with 'COFFEE' emblazoned on them, taking great pleasure in hearing them shatter. Maybe that little shit had sold him out, but he was going out with some fucking dignity.

Everyone was waiting for him, when he arrived at the board room. They hadn't confiscated his badge at security, so maybe they were going to give him a chance to explain that a majority of those emails had just been him fucking around. When Rick moved to take his seat, he was instead instructed to stand at the head of the table. Rick frowned, but he went along with it. He tried not to glare at Jeremy too much. He looked like a little kid, slumped down in his seat and not making any eye contact with him.

It wasn't just emails they had, as it turned out. They played the footage of him laughing after Walker had snapped his kid's neck, and getting rid of both the attending doctor (who had threatened to report him) and Walker's girlfriend. Rick had to admit: it was kinda damning. At the same time, it wasn't even _close_ to the worst shit that went on downstairs. It would be the height of hypocrisy to punish him for any of this.

"So what're we doin' here, gents?" Trager asked once they'd finished laying out all the 'evidence', "Are you gonna play any footage of Andrew sexually assaulting patients? Or maybe I could bring up how closing down the Vocational Block meant everyone in this room got a big raise."

"Rick—"

"What the _fuck_ are we _doing_?"

"Rick, we think you need to have a sabbatical. You're obviously taking things too far."

"_Obviously_."

"This is serious, Rick."

"Fuck you. If you want to fire me, fucking fire me. Don't pussyfoot around. _A sabbatical_. How stupid do you think I am?"

"We're going to need your badge, Rick."

Rick ripped his security badge off and threw it on the table, and the board members exchanged glances. Jeremy pretended to look at his phone, though Rick knew he could feel his eyes boring into his skull.

"I'm not going to quit," Rick said, "I know that's what this is, but I'm not going to quit. I'm not a fucking _quitter_. You want me gone? Grow some fucking balls and fire me. If even one of you can grow enough backbone to do it, I'll consider not giving interviews to every news network on the planet."

That had been stupid. He was angrier than he thought. Fucking _Jer_. Why couldn't he have abstained from this meeting? His words made Jer look up, and Rick's heart sank into his stomach when he saw the fear on his face.

"Are you threatening us, Trager?"

"Absolutely not," Rick said quickly, "Come on, fellahs. I'm pissed off. I wouldn't—"

"That's a violation of your contract."

They were fucking counting on this.

"I didn't violate anything," Rick said quickly, "There's nothing about idle verbal threats—"

"So it was a threat."

"No! It-!"

"Maybe what you need is some therapy, Rick. To help you with those anger issues."

"Don't you fucking _dare_!" Rick took a step backwards, "I don't—_goddammit_!"

He hadn't even heard security come in, but now they had him by his arms. Rick froze at first, but then he started to struggle. _Violently_.

"You can't do this!" Rick knew what this meant. He knew exactly how they were going to get rid of him. He was going downstairs and he'd never come back up again, and oh _god_. Rick had always considered karma to be total bullshit, but he felt very much like a karma bus had just smashed in through a ceiling and landed directly on him, "I'm not fucking crazy!"

"It should be interesting to see how the Morphogenic Engine effects you. The board thanks you for your contribution to this project."

"Jer!" Rick stomped on the foot of one of his captors, and he got a boot in the back of the knee for his trouble, "Jesus Christ, Jer! Is this what you fucking _wanted_? Why not kill me in my fucking sleep?!"

Jeremy didn't say anything, but he looked pale and drawn. He shook his head and looked away. Looking at his fucking phone. Checking his messages, like he always did at meetings.

"Hey, here's a message for yah, buddy!" Rick shrieked, "Hashtag _you're a fucking cumstain_! Fuck you! Fuck all of you! _I'll gut every last one of you and put your kidneys on eBay!_"

Much later, when the sedatives had worn off and he'd woken up in a padded cell, someone slipped a memo under his door. It was a Xerox of a letter, and he caught on fast that they were pretending he'd written it. They'd even forged his signature. It was a resignation letter, to cover their tracks. After everything that had been done to him that day (or was it tomorrow? There wasn't any natural light in the basement), the letter was somehow the worst.

Maybe Rick was a dirtbag, but he wasn't a _quitter_.

He realized a moment later that it must've been Jer's idea. Jer knew how much Rick hated it when he just _gave up_ on things. _Nobody likes a quitter, Jer_, he'd told him more than once.

Rick saved the memo for later, and made a point to wipe his ass with it and then stick it to the door. They weren't going to bury him down here. He wasn't done. He was just getting _started_.


	20. Andrew Offense Squad

Andrew didn't make it far out of the hypnotherapy room before _it_ happened. One minute he was mildly concerned that something was going wrong with their pet project, Billy, and the next, people were exploding. _Exploding_. Was that the right word? It didn't seem like a word that ought to be used to describe people, but another one wasn't coming to him.

He broke into a dead run and hoped that the high-pitched screaming he could hear was coming from anyone but himself. Andrew tumbled through doors, shorting out decontamination rooms as he went, wanting to put something, anything between him and whatever was blowing people up.

When he finally noticed where he was — _outside_ — he realized he'd gone the wrong way. He couldn't get out this way. Shit. He didn't want to go back inside, either, but—

"_This_ one."

"Yes."

"His advances were… _unwelcome_."

"Is there time?"

Andrew realized he had been holding his breath since he'd seen them, and he gasped quietly and then swallowed, taking some nervous steps backwards. These fucking guys. Boy, did he remember these two. He'd had a blast with them at first — jabbing one with a cattle prod until the other agreed to do pretty much anything. They were each other's Achilles heel. It'd been great. He had at least an hour's worth of footage of them alone on his harddrive.

"For him? Time will stand still."

They moved fast. _So fast_. One of them kneed him in the guts and the other slapped him so hard he saw stars. They backed him up against the brick wall. One held him while the other punched in him the face twice and then elbowed him. Andrew spit out a mouthfull of teeth, the sounds of them ticking against concrete echoing in the courtyard. How was he still concious? It seem liked he ought to be out by now.

It was the bald one — the one he usually made do things while he tortured his brother — who shoved his fingers in his mouth, and Andrew started to gag. He tried biting, but without teeth (and with the pain of recently having his fucking_face_ caved in) it was ineffective.

"His tongue?"

"If you're agreeable."

"Certainly, brother."

Andrew was treated to a whole new level of suffering as someone ripped out his tongue with their bare hands. It was nothing compared to how they took his liver out, strip by strip, until the pain and blood loss overwhelmed him.

* * *

"Hey, champ! Wake the fuck up already!"

Andrew was aware of being struck, but his reaction was sluggish. Drugged. He'd been drugged. He attempted to struggle, to shy away from the blows, but he was restrained. It was the animal panic of being pinned that brought him around fully and he made a garbled noise. There was something in his mouth, and he flexed his tongue around it. Smooth. Round. A ball gag? Had someone put a ball gag on him?

"Heeyy, there he is!" a strong, dry hand grasped his jaw. It was squeezing too hard, but he couldn't wrench his head away, "Good morning, sunshine!"

Andrew opened his eyes and immediately closed them when harsh light hammered into them. He blinked rapidly, trying to adjust, trying to see the dark shape looming over him. The voice was familiar. A glint of something, a shard of glass in a round frame.

"Mwww… _mwuuffff_!"

Trager golf clapped.

"Really, buddy? Talking with a gag in? You never were the brightest bulb," Trager moved away from the bed he'd strapped Andrew too and started to hunt around. Other senses were coming back to Andrew. He could smell blood and shit and piss, and decided not to worry about if he was the source or not. He could hear screams, but they were muffled. In other rooms. Where was he? He couldn't tell. One run down, shitty area of the asylum looked like all of the others.

Trager returned. He had a power drill. Once Andrew's eyes focused on it Trager revved it a few times. The drill bit was slathered in gore, and the drill itself was coated, too. There were even dried chunks on it.

"Now I'm gonna give you one chance to redeem yourself, A-Train," Trager said, "And if you do, I'll let you scurry outta here. You feelin' me, son?"

Andrew nodded. His face was wet with tears he hadn't realized he'd been shedding.

"Say you're sorry," Trager said, "Say '_Sorry I fucked you in the ass and then threatened to email the vid to your nephews_, _Rick!_'. Say '_Sorry my cum tastes so goddamn rotten_'. Either of those. Both."

Andrew's face screwed up, and he waited for Trager to take the ball gag out. How could he say either of those with it in? Trager revved the drill again, ticking his fingers impatiently on Andrew's thigh.

"Tick tock, buddy," Rick said, "I ain't got all day. The patients are pilin' up!"

He wasn't going to remove it. _He wasn't going to remove it!_

"_MMMMMMMMMFFFFTT! MMMPH!** MWRRGH!**_" he shook his head and rubbed it against his shoulder, but it was no use. He couldn't dislodge the gag.

"You're a piece of shit, Andrew," Trager said. Without fanfare, he jammed the drill between Andrew's legs and squeezed.

_**Credit for these two shorts goes to tealrallythong and thedramaticmurderer on tumblr. They created the Andrew Offense Squad, because Andrew is just an awful, awful guy. That is why I killed him twice.**_


	21. No Observers

"I don't think I like it here."

"I think it looks nice," Amanda said. She turned to her husband, but Greg looked like he agreed with his father, "The old architecture is beautiful."

"It's probably falling apart inside," Greg muttered.

Amanda pursed her lips and said nothing. This had been Greg's idea. She'd tried to talk him out of it, even, but it was too hard for him to watch his father slip away. And Amanda understood. They had a baby coming, and he had started wandering off, and while they had time _now_ to police him like a child... well. Pretty soon they'd have an _actual_ child.

Maybe the worst part was that he was still lucid enough to understand where they were taking him. And he was lucid enough to be excited to meet his grandchild. It broke both of their hearts, but even though Amanda was willing to _try_, Greg was being realistic about it. They could never leave him alone with the baby, and Mount Massive was offering to take on full care of him for _free_. State of the art facilities, twenty-four hour care, and a specialization in extreme mental illness.

"Oh, Gregory," Martin moaned, gripping his seatbelt and twisting it. Amanada looked back at him, and she could see the whites of his eyes plainly. He was staring at the mountains, "Oh, Gregory, I don't like this place. It _whispers_."

"New places are always a little scary, dad," Greg said gently. He exchanged some words at the security booth and pulled the car around. The grounds were well maintained, so that was a good sign. Amanda kept her eyes on Martin, who kept staring out at the mountains. He'd broken out into a sweat, "Let's get you checked in, okay?"

"Gregory, please," Martin leaned forward and gripped the driver's seat, "Please, son, I don't want to stay here. I don't... I don't like what the mountains are saying."

"Just try it, okay?" Greg looked as tired as he sounded, and he parked the car, "It'll be okay, dad. These people are gonna help you."

"I want to go _home_."

He started to cry, moaning softly and rocking, and Greg looked like he was going to cry, too. It'd be easier for them and the new baby, to not have to keep constant tabs on him, but what if he just withered away without his family? He hadn't been away from Greg since he'd come back from university. Greg and then herself a few years ago had been his primary caregivers. They couldn't afford anything cutting edge for him, and so sometimes it was a struggle. He'd been very good today, but now that they were in the shadow of the asylum, he was acting like he did on his more disconnected days.

"Hang on," Amanda said. She got out of the car, but got right back in, in the back seat with Martin. Gently, she undid her father-in-law's seatbelt and took his hand, placing it on her swollen belly, "Hey, dad."

"Mandy, I don't want to stay here," he said. He still managed a smile when the baby kicked for him. He almost always did, the little trooper, "I want to meet Jason. I want to hold him. The mountain won't let me do that."

"Well I say you'll get to do both of those things," Amanda said, gentle, always so gentle. Greg said she coddled him, but Amanda didn't know another way to be, "Who do you believe, _hmn_? Me or a silly old mountain?"

He lunged at her and grabbed her shoulders, his fingers digging in, _bruising_, making her cry out. Sometimes he had outbursts, but he had _never_taken it out on another person before.

"The bloody-winged angels will find me and they will make me their Prophet and I will do terrible things!" he shrieked at her. Gregory was shouting and scrambling out of his seat, but Amanda could only look into Martin's feverish, mad eyes. There were tears streaming down his face, "The Apostle will _Become_ and I will _burn_! _I_ _WILL BURN_!"

Gregory managed to haul him off, his arms under Martin's, and Amanda finally remembered to breathe, covering her mouth and nose with one hand to muffle a strangled sobbing noise. Oh, god, he was so sick. He was so much worse than they thought.

"GOD WILL PUNISH ALL OF YOU!" Martin shrieked. They were making a scene. Two men in suits were lingering near a car that was probably worth more than their rental home. The younger one nudged the older one. Both of them were smirking and Amanda wished she had it in her to be outraged, "YOU'LL ALL WITNESS THE BECOMING!"

Some men rushed outside, and they were quick to administer Martin a sedative and ease him into a wheelchair. They were gentle, so gentle with him, and Amanda refused to get out of the car. She couldn't stop crying. She couldn't watch this. She had come along to be strong for Greg, but she was so _stupid_. Greg had been dealing with this for all of his adult life. He looked ashen and resigned, and he wound up doing the paperwork for his father's intake right there in the parking lot while the men in suits looked on. They were smiling, and Amanda hated both of them even though they could've been talking about anything.

She knew it was about Martin. She knew it was about how Greg knelt next to the wheelchair and took his father's limp hand in both of his and squeezed. She knew they were snickering, not even behind their hands, at how Greg stroked his arm and got up to kiss him on the cheek. She knew they were laughing at how tightly Greg hugged him, and how he couldn't let go for a few minutes. The orderlies were patient, and they, at least, looked appropriately moved. He would be in good hands, here. It wasn't the awful men in suits that would be looking after him.

Amanda forced herself out of the car and to approach. She was shaken up, but she had to say goodbye. Amanda knew he hadn't meant it, that he'd regret it later, and _god_, she hated that glassy look in his eyes. She kissed his forehead and put one of his limp hands against her belly again, and told him that Jason was excited to meet him. He was drugged and he didn't respond, but she wanted to hope that he could hear and understand.

Greg put an arm around her, and they watched as they wheeled him towards the building.

When they went to visit him with newborn Jason, all he had to say was that such a vessel was too small and weak, and that they ought to leave._Quickly_. Greg had screamed and threatened to sue, and a man Amanda was sure she remembered from a few months ago came to talk him down. And threaten to bill him for his father's stay if he even _thought_ about a lawsuit. They blackmailed both of them into silence, and they were asked not to return to the asylum as it was 'disruptive' to Martin's therapy.

The next time they heard about Martin, it was an inquiry regarding his remains. They'd had to use dental records to identify him. Amanda had nightmares for weeks after the funeral, after seeing charred bones placed into a casket. He'd tried to warn them back then, and he screamed at her in her dreams now, his flesh cracking as she and Greg both turned their backs on him while he burned. She would wake up _smelling_ it, _feeling_the _heat_.

And the mountains whispered in her dreams. They whispered terrible things, about her husband and about her son and about _her_. Greg said he didn't dream at all, but she knew he was lying. They both _knew_.

He had tried to warn them. They hadn't listened.


End file.
